


Atlanta

by skyenapped



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Angst, Binge Drinking, Coma, Courtroom Drama, Domestic, Established Relationship, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Recovery, Serious Injuries, fluffff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-22
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-24 07:02:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 60,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/936819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyenapped/pseuds/skyenapped
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He says it in a way that he’s never said anything else: with a level of loyalty, affection, and commitment so great it feels like a thousand pounds of steel on his tongue. He asks it with an understated plea for absolution – because he promised to stay, and though this may not be his fault, he’s leaving just the same. He breathes it like it’s the one sacred word left in his vocabulary; like it’s a verse in a bible they both believe in. </p><p>Harvey whispers Mike's name like it's the beginning and the end of everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story has a major character injury but _not_ death, although there is the illusion of it, if that makes any sense. (That's the only way I can describe it, but I wanted to warn as best I can since the implication is there.) Set 5 years after Harvey and Mike meet, and suspending belief of how things may have played out differently, I'm sticking to canon as much as I can/calling the firm Pearson Darby/etc. I don't know how many parts there'll be but I have at least a few written so far, and it'll probably be long because I can't be tamed. ;)
> 
> Thanks for reading!  
> -s

 

*

Mike doesn’t remember when it started, when they began to drift, when their world that was once so closely, so tightly entwined began to separate; when they started becoming two people again, instead of one, but he knows that it has. Slowly and corrosively, first as a strain in the usual conversation and then as more and more distance between them on the couch, in bed, at the dinner table, in the town car. A few inches replaced touching thighs, a bladed body divided the mattress into almost an entirely separate entity, and eventually a whole foot replaced skimming shoulders, and instead of relaxing when Harvey entered the room, Mike felt his whole body tense. Work was no exception. There was a warmth to Harvey’s office, some comfortable sense of belonging, but it was being slowly sucked out through the vents, and in its wake Mike could feel himself growing cold.  

This was his fault.

He runs his fingers over a calendar on their wall one day, sadly tracing the month, the date, the year. He does the math in his head without squinting. Harvey comes up behind him and though Mike doesn’t see him, he does feel him, first as a solid, reassuring presence that not too long ago he’d thought he couldn’t live without, but then, suddenly, as a heavy, cold wall, trapping him in time, loving him when he least deserves it.

Mike doesn’t understand why he feels like this, and Harvey tries to, but fails. He stops short of sliding a hand around Mike’s chest and settles for patting his head gently. Then he silently walks away.

Mike blinks and a dozen tears fall down his face at once. The calendar is out of focus. He tears it off the wall.

Across the room, Harvey stops, and sighs quietly.

 _“I don’t believe in God.”_ Mike cries, and he tries hard to sound angry and resolute but the words leave his mouth young and helpless; his declaration at best a desperate attempt to blame someone or something that he can’t see or hear or touch. It doesn’t make him feel any better.

He turns to look at Harvey, who is standing, arms at his side, not moving because these days he doesn’t know when Mike will need him or when he’ll want to curl in on himself instead and be left completely alone – the way he’s always inherently felt.

“I know.” Harvey says.

Mike’s voice is weak, but sincere. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.” Harvey repeats. It’s all he can think of. He doesn’t know what else is left.

They stand there, like acquaintances, like they haven’t lived together for sixteen months, like this place isn’t home for either of them anymore.

Eventually Mike walks by, tucking in his shoulder, taking steps to the side, like if even their shirts touch it could spark a fire and kill them both. But there’s so little there now, Harvey doubts that’s possible.

Mike closes the door to the bedroom behind him. Harvey swallows a million emotions that he can’t speak of. They burn in his stomach like the build-up of acid after he skips a meal because he’s too numb to eat these days. He picks up the calendar from the floor.

Mike’s made it years without his parents. Harvey can’t make it a day without him. But he pushes the torn paper down into the trash and he knows that it isn’t his call.

 

*

 

Harvey wakes up on a Tuesday to find half of Mike’s things in the hallway, as close to the door as they could be without blocking the exit. It’s not a complete shock. Somehow, Harvey still feels like he’s been electrocuted.

He tries to make coffee but he gets tears in the grounds.

_“Fuck.”_

He breaks an empty mug against the wall and leaves the glass on the floor.

 

*

 

They try to maintain a pretense at work, but it’s hard to keep up; painstaking to pretend that they’re okay when the truth is that time has stopped for the both of them, their hearts beat out of sync now, and for the first time in five years they have no idea what the other is thinking.

“I need you to talk to me.”

Harvey doesn’t catch Mike off-guard when he appears over him in his office, because Mike can tell when he’s walking toward him, from all the way down the hall; a sixth sense that speaks volumes about what they still have – and what they might be giving up.

“About what?” Mike asks dumbly. He doesn’t look up.

“About the suitcases,” Harvey tells him, and his voice shatters on the air the way the coffee mug did against the wall – in an instant, and in despair.

“I need help with this case,” is all Mike responds. He sounds a thousand miles away, and Harvey realizes it’s because he is, and has been for some time. It must be the reason Harvey’s felt like he’s missed him so much even though he’s been sitting beside him all along.

 

*

 

Even the elevator ride feels longer than a slow Monday afternoon. It descends almost with a dread Harvey can feel seeping into his stomach, his chest, his bones, and draws them closer to the street, the sidewalk, the car, home, and to the inevitable. His throat hurts because he’s wanted to cry all day and he couldn’t.

Mike stands beside him and he feels like he’s standing beside a ghost; someone too gone for words to keep around. Harvey’s tried everything but he doesn’t know if he’s been any match for the decade that Mike felt like he had no one. And every touch, and every reassurance, and every _I love you_ that doesn’t seem to rescue him, is systematically bankrupting Harvey.

The air outside should hit Mike hard, maybe even push the air from his chest, but because he already feels cold and suffocated, it has little effect. He climbs in the car after Harvey and slides as close to him as he can.

Ray drives off.

 “Do you still love me?” Harvey asks. His voice in the backseat is hoarse and fearful. It’s out of character for the Harvey Specter everyone else knows, but for Mike it’s positively him.

He wants to be offended that Harvey has to ask him that, but he realizes his actions lately haven’t done much to back up his answer. It’s the truth, though. He only hopes Harvey will believe him.

And it’s that moment Mike realizes how little this is about them and how much more it is about himself. Skeletons he can’t get beyond, a deep-seated isolation that no one but Harvey has ever alleviated – and what the hell is he supposed to do if that goes away? He can count on one hand the times he’s ever felt in control of his life, and when he wasn’t, he was always struggling to find it, his grip constantly slipping. With Harvey, he found a salvation that he’ll make himself give up before life or God or circumstance tears it from his arms with the same jarring cruelty with which it took his parents.

It’s the hardest thing he’s ever done. It’s like choosing between two forms of execution. The only relief is the acceptance of a lesser pain. But even that isn’t much comfort.

 _“Yes,”_ Mike answers.

Harvey’s face is difficult to see in the dark, but the street lamps and the storefronts they pass help cast intermittent light on his face. He looks tired, nervous. His jaw is set as if keeping his entire expression from falling.

“Then don’t leave,” he says, and it’s a plea not masked by pride. He is begging Mike to stay.

He wonders if it’s selfish, for a moment, to ask Mike to stay when half of him is already out the door; if maybe Mike can only ever be by himself because for most of his life it was all he’d ever known. But it doesn’t make sense to Harvey, because Mike is _terrible_ by himself. On his own, he had no compass. He didn’t cut his hair. He sold drugs. His brilliance squandered under the regret and shame of his past self-destruction and lack of self-esteem. It would be one thing if that’s what Mike wants; if that made him happy back then, but it didn’t, and Harvey knows it. He’d been fading. Together, they’re light years in the other direction; a legal powerhouse that once made Harvey realize he hadn’t _begun_ to understand what winning even _meant_ until he’d met Mike. And at home, the void that stared Harvey down from one side of the bed, lingered around like an incomplete case for so long, had been filled. Everything made sense with Mike. When Harvey looked forward, his life included him at every turn. So trying to picture the future now, without Mike, is like trying to paint _Starry Night_ without the color blue. It halts him, like someone tugging hard on the reins and stopping him short. He doesn’t fight it because without Mike, there isn’t anywhere else to go.

Mike sighs – _“I can’t stay.”_ – and Harvey feels his breath on his neck. It’s the closest they’ve been in what could be weeks, but it’s hard to tell. Time feels like a suspension of reality these days; a slow-motion grace period during a freefall that Harvey can’t see the end of but knows the impact of will hurt like hell. Mike’s head on his shoulder should feel like home. Instead it feels like goodbye.

“Why not?”

“Because I do love you,” Mike says softly against Harvey’s suit. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me and—”

Harvey’s eyes feel scalded by the onset of tears. He shakes his head slowly, over and over and over, almost in preemptive denial of whatever it is Mike will say next.

“That’s why I can’t stay, Harvey. I have to leave you before I lose you.”

“You’re not gonna lo—” Harvey’s words fail him, a sob sneaking up into his throat and devouring them, leaving hardly a scrambled half-promise when they do pass his lips. He swallows hard but he can’t find the strength to try again. He gets it now. He doesn’t understand it, but he gets it – why Mike feels like he has to let go before he doesn’t have a choice in the matter at all, because that’s what experience has taught him.

They make it a few more miles in silence before Harvey can bear to speak again. Mike’s chin still rests on his shoulder, nose pressed against his neck. It should feel like a promise. Instead it feels like an apology.

 _“I. need. you.”_ Harvey tells him, the best way he can, each word at a time, emphasis on every one, as stoic as he can manage to be. It’s three seconds of resolve.

Mike nuzzles against his neck and whispers, “No you don’t.”

Harvey knows he isn’t trying to be cruel, but it still tears him apart.

This is his fault.

Somewhere along the way he failed to make Mike realize how much he needed him. He was better at the solo, one-man army façade than what would’ve been beneficial, and when he and Mike started dating, he didn’t wake up and tell him that how well he’d slept the night before wasn’t what he was used to – that it was the first time in a long time that he didn’t toss or turn or worry. He didn’t tell Mike how insecure he was, or how he still got nervous walking into a courtroom, or how his palms sweated like a teenager the first time he asked Mike on a date. Maybe he thought Mike knew, or he was afraid of him knowing, but either way – he didn’t tell him. And now, as the floor falls out from underneath his feet, he realizes that he should have.

He slides a hand around Mike’s knee, feeling him slipping away even as he pulls him closer, as close as he can, until Mike is plastered to the side of his body and he starts to feel like they’re one person again, at least for a moment.

Harvey covers his face with his other hand and cries.   

 

*

 

Mike’s belongings still line the hallway but the apartment feels empty just the same. Harvey hangs up his coat and there’s a gap in the closet where Mike’s suits no longer hang. Mike hasn’t left yet, not physically, but Harvey already aches for him to come back.

He thinks about one morning that Mike went to Jersey to meet a particularly high-end client who couldn’t meet them in the City for family reasons. It’s the only night in sixteen months – probably longer – that they’ve spent apart. Maybe that’s the problem; Harvey can’t be sure. But he doesn’t remember it as a break, he remembers it as torture. He remembers it as waking up late because he couldn’t fall asleep until the early morning, and Mike wasn’t there to wake him up by running a hand up and down his chest. And when he took a shower, Mike wasn’t in the bathroom brushing his teeth and running his mouth about something that Harvey couldn’t hear over the roar of the water, but smiled at anyway. There was no one to watch get dressed or watch him get dressed or kiss goodbye or pretend his tie was crooked just as an excuse to fix it.

It was one day. It was literally _one day_. Every other one was saturated with his presence. And Harvey’s still haunted by the one fucking day Mike _wasn’t_ there. The mere prospect of a lifetime of days like that is enough to induce a level of panic that spurs him to fight like hell.

Harvey will let him go if he has to, but there’ll be claw marks in Mike’s arms.

 

*

 

Thursday night, Mike stands in the hallway at home looking lost or overwhelmed, Harvey can’t tell which. His face is a puzzle these days; one more ember in all of this that succeeds in burning Harvey’s skin – the realization that he in fact can’t read Mike anymore and isn’t sure if it’s because he’s lost the ability or if Mike just won’t let him.

“I thought that you knew,” he calls, watching him from the living room. He puts his hands in his pockets, shoulders forward, almost shy. It reminds Mike of the way Harvey looked when he first asked him out, standing beside his cubicle, not making eye contact, as if he thought Mike might actually turn him down.

_I thought we could go to that new steak place in midtown...um…if you want…_

It was so hilarious to see Harvey stumbling over his words for a change that Mike sat back in his chair and let it go on for a while until Harvey got so flustered he kicked him gently in the leg.

 _Are you asking me out, Harvey? Because I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to do that_ before _you sleep with someone, so you’re, you know, a little late._

Mike didn’t think, at the time, that he’d ever see Harvey like that again (wrong), so he soaked it up while he could. Harvey nodded and played along, though his face looked mildly flushed and red.

_Look, I have reservations at Del Frisco for two in an hour. So you can stay here and highlight or you can come with me, but either way, I’m going to eat steak and drink wine…and I’m sure I can find another hot young blonde to join me if this is your way of saying no._

_Nope, nope, coming!_ Mike grabbed his stuff and ran to catch up as Harvey walked off. _You wouldn’t really do that, would you?_

_What?_

_Um, go without me. With someone else._

The smugness fell from Harvey’s face and he shook his head. _No. Never._

The memory of that evening calms some of the turmoil in Mike, and for the first time since the anniversary of his parent’s death began to feel imminent weeks ago, he starts to feel a little better.

“Knew what?” he asks, taking his eyes off of the boxes on the floor to look up.

“How much I need you,” Harvey explains. “I thought you knew, but I never told you. I thought I didn’t have to. I guess I thought if I was with you enough and if I held you tight enough, somehow you’d just know. But that wasn’t fair. I should’ve told you. I’m sorry.”

Mike looks down at the floor. Harvey probably could have conveyed his message quicker by telling him that the way Mike would feel if he left is the way _he_ would feel if Mike left – but that seemed cruel and ruthless and eye-for-an-eye had no place in love.

“And I know you don’t think I do,” Harvey continues, stepping closer. “But you’re wrong, Mike. I _do_ need you,” he sucks in a breath like it might give him courage, but his voice still quakes. “I need you all the time. I need you here, I need you at work, I need you at night, I need you in the morning, I need you in court…I need you when I’m having a good a day, and when I’m having a bad day, and when I win, and when I lose, I need you, Mike. I _need_ you. And if you walk out that door, I…I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do.”

Mike has seen and heard all the sides of Harvey that no one else has. He’s witnessed the fear, the doubts, the uncertainty – but this level of pain and desperation in Harvey’s voice is new even to him, and it hurts. His stomach twists with guilt. How can he make Harvey see the logic in his decision when he can hardly see it himself?

“I’m afraid,” he admits, looking up again.

“Of what?”

“Everything,” Mike shrugs. “Being alone…”

“You’re not alone, Mike,” Harvey reminds him. “But if you leave, you will be. Is that what you want?”

“But it would be my _choice,”_ Mike says.

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Harvey studies him but he can’t decode his expression. “Do you think I would leave you?”

Mike shakes his head. “No. I don’t know.”

Harvey’s face falls, _“Mike,”_ he breathes. “Mike, I will never le—”

“I can’t, Harvey,” Mike interrupts. He motions between them. “I can’t just pretend that everything is fine and that life is fair and then wake up one day have everything be gone. I can’t! It happened to me once Harvey and I can’t let it happen again.”

It’s the most they’ve communicated in a month, and the floodgates are open. Harvey feels like he can see things from Mike’s perspective for the first time. He hardly needs to pull his hands from his pockets before Mike is launching himself into his arms and holding on like both of their lives depend on it.

Mike presses his face against Harvey’s chest and cries hard. He’s letting go. Letting go, to some degree, of the past and what it’s meant for him for a month out of every year, and letting go because it was driving a rift between him and the only person who has ever fought to keep him around.

“I love you more than anything,” Harvey tells him, in a hard whisper against the top of his head. It could be one more plea for him to stay, but the way Mike hears it, it sounds more like a testament, a promise – that no matter what Mike decides, for the rest of his life, Harvey will love him.

More than anything.

 

*

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for any typos I've missed....I tend to write while also singing, watching tv, and struggling to see over the cat sleeping on my chest

 

*

Friday passes like coming up for air after diving too far underwater. By the end of the day Mike feels like he can stand up straight and look at a calendar without bursting into tears. It’s the best he can hope for. It’s progress.

He finds Harvey in his office at 5:15 and gives him a stack of files he asked for.

“Go home,” Harvey tells him. “You look exhausted.”

Mike frowns, “I can stay and help, you know.”

“You always stay and help, Mike. Go home and sleep. I’m right behind you.”

Feeling grateful, but somewhat useless, Mike goes home.

Harvey finds him in bed two hours later, awake, quietly staring at the ceiling.

“Where is all your stuff?” Harvey asks him, throat tightening. He tugs his tie off and tosses it over the bedpost, looking around nervously.

“I put it back,” Mike says.

Harvey pauses, his breath catching. He collapses onto the bed and sighs, relief coursing through him as he winds an arm around Mike’s waist and pulls him close. Mike knows Harvey can’t see him but he smiles at the embrace anyway.

“I can’t leave you,” he admits. “I never could. I never would have. I was just scared. I’m so sorry, Harvey.”

Harvey holds him tighter and sighs into the space between his neck and shoulder, “It’s okay. It’s okay, Mike.”

Mike rolls over to face him. “I realized how long it’s been since I lost my parents and I…I panicked. I don’t want to feel like that again, Harvey. Like I don’t have control over anything.”

“You won’t,” Harvey assures him, pushing back his hair. “You’re not eleven anymore, Mike. And I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

It’s all that Mike needs to hear.

 

*

 

The more time that goes by and the more distance Mike is able to put between him and the anniversary of 1992, the better he functions. Two weeks pass, and he feels like he and Harvey have found their way back. He doesn't have an explanation for why it's all hit him so hard this time and Harvey doesn't demand one. There was the gentle suggestion of counseling, though Mike, unsurprisingly, shot it down. But he did promise to speak up instead of internalizing his fears to the point of paranoia, so with a heavy sigh Harvey let the topic go.

 “Have you ever been in love before?”

Mike’s question interrupts the rustling going on in the office as Harvey sets down takeout on the coffee table and pushes aside paperwork. It’s January, they’re knee deep in a complicated merger, and it’s a well-deserved break.

“Wow, that’s profound,” Harvey says, a little surprised.

“I’m just wondering.”

“Mike…I’m in love _now,”_ Harvey frowns at the question and sits across from him.

Mike sits back with his food and rolls his eyes. “That's why I said _before,_ Harvey. Come on, it's like, fourth grade grammar.”

“Oh, well, in that case…” Harvey’s voice drops to a mumble. “Yes.”

Mike chokes on a mouthful of rice because he didn’t really expect that answer, though now that he considers it, maybe it is presumptuous of him to think he was the first and only person to ever sweep Harvey Specter off his feet.

“Who was it?”

Harvey laughs, “It was a long time ago, Mike.”

“How long ago?”

“Long enough.”

“Man? Woman?”

Harvey huffs. He outstretches his hand. “Can I have some salt please?”

“Come on, Harvey,” Mike whines, throwing a packet in his direction. “At least tell me his name?”

“The only name I care about is yours,” Harvey declares. “Are you done interrogating me now?”

Mike folds his arms and pouts. Eventually Harvey caves.

“All right,” he sighs. “I was at Harvard…”

“You were younger than me,” Mike observes, amused.

Harvey raises an eyebrow, “Barely. He was a T.A. in my Dispute Resolution class.”

Mike waits for him to elaborate and when he doesn’t, he sighs loudly. “That’s all you’re going to tell me? Really?”

“I don’t know what else there is to tell, Mike. It didn’t work out.”

“Why not?”

Harvey shrugs, recollection manifesting on his face, but not necessarily nostalgia. “He was a little older than me—”

“How much older?” Mike asks nosily.

“Not as much older than me as I am of you,” Harvey says, and clears his throat to point out Mike’s interruption. _“Anyway._ He ended up going into International Law. By the time I finished school, he was travelling a lot, and I couldn’t go with him because I was working my ass off at the D.A.’s office and Cameron wouldn’t give me any vacation days. Not that I would’ve taken any, of course.”

Mike nods astutely. “Oh, of _course.”_

Harvey smirks and waves a dismissive hand. “Eventually he settled down here,” he shrugs. “But by that point we’d grown apart.”

“Do you keep in touch?”

Harvey shakes his head. “We run into each other in court every once in a while."

 They eat quietly for a few minutes and then Mike speaks up.

“So you loved him,” he says, less of a question and more of a confirmation.

Harvey hesitates, nodding slowly, and then says, “Yeah. I did.”

“As much as me?” Mike hardly finishes the sentence before he regrets it; wonders if it sounds too ridiculous or self-serving especially since he’s the one who brought this all up in the first place. Honestly, he intends for it to come out as a joke, but he’s painfully aware of the way his playful tone bleeds with insecurity. There’s no way it's lost on Harvey, either.

But fortunately, Harvey finds it in himself to give Mike an answer without addressing the obvious.

“If I did, I would’ve quit prosecuting and gone to Italy for three years,” he motions around the room with a fond sigh. “And yet, here I am.”

They’re quiet for a few seconds before he realizes Mike is grinning at him like he’s won the lottery. Harvey smirks back a little, because he can’t help it, and Mike makes a ridiculous show of moving his food to one side so he can lean over the table and kiss him on the forehead. He sits back again, smile fading, replaced with an almost sleepy look of contentment. These are the nights and the talks that, in a way, are their foundation – the one thing that they had together before they had anything else.

“You still didn’t tell me his name,” Mike says softly.

Harvey straightens up. “Mike?”

“Yeah?”

“Eat your damn food.” He tries to sound stern but he ends up smiling anyway. “This work isn’t going to do itself.”

 

*

 

 

Most of what Mike remembers about the day his parents died has been hazed by time and convoluted by what other people told him happened: the press, the police reports, the driver’s version, Nick Rinaldi’s version, and his grandmother’s attempt to make it all sound so much less gruesome than it really was, if only to help Mike sleep at night. All of those stories eventually corrupted his own memory until he wasn’t entirely sure what was the truth and what was a lie. What remains in his mind about that day now are only the feelings he had – the feeling like he’d just fallen out a sixty-story window and there was no one at the bottom to catch him. Like the floor under his feet turned to sand. Like he was trying to run away from something terrible but his legs were moving underwater. Like he was screaming at the top of his lungs and no one could hear him. Like his world had gone from day to night in thirteen seconds and he was terrified of the dark. Like he was being punished for something he’d done wrong but couldn’t remember what it was. Like he was sorry for everything but it was still all his fault.

He lives with the repressed but constant fear that he will one day feel like that again. But he makes it, he survives years and it doesn’t happen.

So there’s nothing about February 19th, 2016 that should be any different than all of the days in between that proved him wrong. But if that were the case, life might be fair.

 

He wakes up in the morning, already mentally reviewing his to-do list.

He has two meetings, Thursday’s leftover paperwork, briefs to (begrudgingly) proof for Louis, and hopefully enough time left in the day to prep his witness for court on Monday.

The weekend couldn’t feel further away.

He showers quickly and hops on one leg into his pants while drying his hair with a towel. It’s a skill he mastered years ago to compensate for being a chronically late person.

He sits on the edge of the bed, does a C- job of putting on his tie, and shrugs. He stands up, only to feel a hand grab his wrist, spin him around, and pull him down onto the bed.

“Harvey!” he shouts, landing face down beside him with a grunt.

Harvey laughs sleepily but doesn’t open his eyes. He hauls Mike on top of him.

“I’m gonna be late,” Mike tells him. “My boss is going to be pissed.”

Harvey opens his eyes, “Oh really?”

“Yeah.” Mike sighs dramatically against his mouth. “He’s such a dick when I’m late.”

“He sounds awful,” Harvey says, in between leaning up to kiss Mike’s mouth. “I don’t know how you stand him.”

“He has redeeming qualities.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Mike shrugs. “I just can’t think of any right now.”

Harvey laughs and shakes his head. He looks up at Mike for several seconds and then sighs sadly.

Mike frowns, “What?”

“I don’t…” Harvey looks away. “I don’t know, I just…”

“Just what?” Mike frames his face and turns it back toward him. “Talk to me.”

“I don’t know, sometimes I don’t want you leave before me because I think…” Harvey’s voice trails off, like this confession is just too difficult to put in words. He takes a deep breath and forces it out. “Because I think I might not see you again.”

Mike opens his mouth to speak, but Harvey stops him, putting one finger gently against his lips.

“I don’t wanna come home again and find all your stuff is packed up, or that you’re already gone.”

“Harvey,” Mike whispers. “That was months ago. I’ll never do that again. I won’t, I swear. I was scared, Harvey. Scared of staying, scared of leaving, scared of...everything.”

“I know,” Harvey pulls him down, closer, into a hug. “So was I.”

They lay that way for a while, Mike’s head on his chest, Harvey’s heartbeat thudding consistently in his ear. Mike wants to hear it forever.

“Mm, just stay here and come in later with me.”

“Really?”

Harvey scoffs, “No,” he says, shoving Mike gently off him. “Get your ass to work.”

Mike drags himself away with a grimace, but eventually he smiles and then grabs his shoes and leaves the room. Harvey hears him rustling around the kitchen – the smell of coffee hitting his nose – and eventually the front door opens and shuts.

Harvey opens the drawer to the bedside table and looks fondly at a small, charcoal box. He falls back asleep wondering where to leave it.

 

*

 

“Is it just me or is Harvey acting squirrely today?” Mike asks loudly upon reaching Donna’s desk.

Donna looks up. “Maybe he’s acting squirrely because you’ve been helping Louis for forty-five minutes instead of working on the Valito case.”

“I can’t get on Louis’ bad side,” Mike responds. “This is the least amount of work he’s given me in weeks. Besides, I’m _on_ the Valito case. In fact, I’m ahead. I’m _amazing_. So it’s something else.” Donna looks away and he squints. “You’re hiding something.”

“What? No, I'm not."

 “If you know everything, as you claim, then technically that means you must hide about eighty-three percent of it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Mike eyes her suspiciously, but it seems that for once, Donna might actually not know. Eventually Mike gives up and heads into Harvey's office with his work.

 

*

 

Mike gets back from lunch at 3:30 to meet Harvey as he’s leaving the building.

“Where are you going?” he asks, running to catch up as Harvey waves at Ray who’s waiting by the curb.

“Valito exec doesn’t want to leave his CEO post for an hour to come here for the meeting, so I’m taking the contract to him.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah,” Harvey sighs. He looks mildly inconvenienced but otherwise mellow.

“Do you need me to come?”

Harvey shakes his head. “No. I need you to stay here and get ready for Monday. If we don’t get a ruling in our favor, this whole thing is going to get tossed.”

“Already on it,” Mike tells him.

“Good,” Harvey replies cheerily. Then his demeanor shifts, first to a sober expression and then a nervous one. “Have you been home?”

Mike looks perplexed, but he doesn’t miss a beat. “I don’t get a long enough lunch to have time to go home. Is that something I could talk to my boss about?”

Harvey smiles briefly but then the look returns. He’s been acting just slightly off all afternoon, not necessarily in a bad way, but in a way that’s throwing Mike for a loop. There’s nothing special about today, other than that it’s Friday, and ritualistically movie night. Which is special enough for them, but it shouldn’t make Harvey so jittery. It’s just wine and _Legal Eagles_ after all.

“Why?”

“Just wondering,” Harvey says. He brushes by him and winks. “I’ll be back soon.”

Mike shrugs and chalks it all up to their workload and impending court date. He’s watching Harvey head for the car when his phone vibrates.

_I love you. Don’t go home without me._

Mike grins at his phone, frowns, and then looks up at Harvey who’s looking back at him smugly. Mike’s fingers type like fire.

_Love you too. I won’t. You’re being weird today._

Harvey climbs in the backseat and slams the door.

_Don’t be paranoid. What are we watching tonight?_

_Legal Eagles!_

_Good. Now go back to work, Rookie._

Mike is standing in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at his phone and smiling like an idiot. He looks up and watches the car pull away from the curb and down the street toward a green light before he starts typing again.

_Technically not a rookie anymore but ok_

He doesn’t get a chance to hit send before he hears it: blaring horns, screeching tires, grinding brakes, and then the unmistakable collision of metal slamming into metal. It’s sudden, deafening; the kind of sound that rocks Mike's nervous system and sends his startle response into overdrive.

It only lasts three seconds.

There’s a brief, eerie silence that consumes the block immediately after, but it’s fleeting, and in its wake – chaos.

Mike’s heart is pounding double time in his chest, and he isn’t sure if it’s just from the sounds and the shock, or if it’s because subconsciously – he already knows what happened.

He’s running toward the scene before he even makes the conscious effort to move, blood rushing in his ears, louder and louder with the impact of his feet on the sidewalk. Panic invades his chest, disrupts his breathing and any semblance of rational thought. Over it all he can already hear the ominous ringing of fast-approaching sirens. 

The smell of gasoline permeates the air. People rush to help, and others protest in fear.

Mike reaches the mangled town car in seconds, though it feels like he’s been running for miles. His legs barely support him.

The back left side of the car is crushed. The right side is in flames. Mike can feel the heat from six feet away, burning him up.

His heart sinks to his stomach, knees slam into the pavement, and the sounds around him – the shouting, the distant sirens, the mass hysteria – fade out into a dull roar. All he hears after that is a series of wails spurred from someone so emotionally leveled that his eardrums rattle like backup instruments in a funeral symphony.

It feels like an eternity passes before Mike gains the wherewithal to realize that the screams are his own.

 

*

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _WARNING: This story has major character injury but not death, although there is the illusion of it. That's the only way I can describe it, but I wanted to warn as best I can since the implication is there._  
> 
> thank you for the kind comments, you guys are THE greatest!

 *

 

There’s a silence in the room that mocks the gravity of the status quo. There’s the implication of noise and activity outside, but it’s hushed almost entirely by a closed door. The clock on the wall ticks, but it isn’t enough white noise to make Mike feel any better. Nothing could.

He wrings his hands in his lap and then tentatively sets one on top of Harvey’s.

“Are you in pain?”

Harvey looks back at him and smiles weakly. “No,” he whispers, and shakes his head once. He’s maxed out on intravenous narcotics, but there’s still a bone-deep pain that he cannot escape from. Somehow, though, lying to Mike for the first time hurts much worse. He grits his teeth to deal with both.

Mike nods in relief, but the lump in his throat isn’t getting any smaller.

_Why me? Why you? Why us?_

Harvey can almost hear the questions that Mike doesn’t dare ask out loud, because he looks at him sadly, as if apologizing for not having the answers.

“They said, um, there’s like, an hour, maybe.” Mike tries so hard not to cry again that his words come out in high-pitched hiccups, each one riddled with more pain than the last. But his effort at least keeps him coherent, which is more than he could say for himself earlier. “Maybe, um, maybe, ninety, ninety, min-, min-utes.”

In stark contrast to Mike’s stuttering and shifting, Harvey responds in slow, calculated motion.

“I know.”

His acceptance is finally breaking down the walls of Mike’s denial. He can see them falling from his face; Mike’s eyes dimming, swallowing back tears that he’s finally realizing won’t undo what’s already been done.

But he wouldn’t be the Mike that Harvey knows if he didn’t fight that reality with everything he’s has.

“I _can’t,”_ he whines. It only takes a moment for his voice to break all over again.

 _“Ssshh,”_ Harvey tells him, masking a cringe as he forces himself toward the side of the bed and closer to Mike. “Stop. Stop so I can talk to you.”

Mike sniffles and nods wildly, “Okay,” he gasps. “Okay.”

Harvey nods, “Good. Come here.”

Mike leans into his space, one elbow propping him up on the edge of the mattress. Harvey reaches up and pushes back his hair, regarding him fondly for several seconds before speaking again.

“I love you.” he says. “More than anything.” His voice is still that low, peaceful tone. Mike immediately opens his mouth to interrupt but Harvey puts a finger on his lips _. “Shhh,”_ he repeats. “Listen. I want you to do something for me. Okay?”

Mike nods again. “Anything,” he whispers. Harvey offers him what would be a reassuring smile if this were any other day.

“Quit.” Harvey tells him, with gentle certainty. “Not right now. But soon. And then go back to school. I don’t want you to get in trouble. You’re already a lawyer, the best one I’ve ever seen. But get the proof anyway.”

Mike squeezes his hand tighter. He wants so badly to interrupt, to tell Harvey that it doesn’t matter, that he doesn’t want to do _anything_ without him; that he doesn’t care about work or school or anything else in this moment. But Harvey asked him to listen, so he does.

“Go wherever you want. Columbia. Fordham. Leave the City if you have to – but just to go school. There’s a business card in my desk at work, second drawer on the right. It’s a friend of mine – he’ll help you if you have any trouble getting in.”

“But what about—”

“Don’t worry about your academic record. I took care of that two years ago.”

“You did?”

Harvey nods, slow and fluid, partly from the drugs, partly from the pain.

Mike looks down at their hands – fingers laced together – and shudders. He thinks, _this can’t be fucking happening._ But Harvey’s voice fades in again – as real as any sound Mike has ever heard – and he’s confronted with the fact that it is. It’s absolutely happening.

“Promise you won’t give up on it, if it’s what you love.”

 _“Okay,”_ Mike agrees. “But…I don’t want to leave here without you.”

Harvey’s heart breaks at the way Mike’s voice pitches in despair. This is one thing that he can’t fix for him; one battle he has to win all on his own. Harvey believes he can do it, but he isn’t sure that Mike does.

“What the _fuck_ am I supposed to do without you?”

There’s a hesitation in Harvey’s answer, as he looks back at Mike. But despite all of the medication that mildly sedates him, there’s also a sense of clarity in his thinking. Finally he says, “Everything you would have done with me.”

Mike understands the point, but he isn’t sure how that’s possible. With Harvey, it’s working and laughing and making coffee at three a.m.., watching old movies and falling asleep on the couch and looking forward to tomorrow. With Harvey, he’s protected, and happy, and content. With him slipping away, however, Mike doesn’t feel like there’s even another hour, let alone any tomorrows. The truth is, he couldn’t find his footing before he met Harvey, and he’ll lose it again when he’s gone.

There’s a tug and Mike feels Harvey pulling his hand away and using it to frame his face, running a thumb feather-light over his cheek.

Harvey watches as Mike’s eyes fly up to meet his. They’re blue and wet and so completely _full_ of loyalty that Harvey understands, in a brand new way, that Mike would have never left him, not at any point, under any circumstance, no matter how afraid he was. And that any indication Mike was ever heading for the door was a kneejerk reaction to having been an orphan for so long. It would have never actually happened, leaving any doubts he had one hundred percent unfounded. The realization that Mike loves _him_ just as much – with all of the same madness, martyring, equal disregard for self, professional sacrifice, and total irrationalism – hits Harvey like a fist to his ribcage. And the sheer cruelty of the timing of it nearly expels what little air is left in his chest.

“Mike,” he says, and he breathes steadily through his nose, all of his willpower in play to keep his emotions from rising into his voice. “Someday, someone else is going to love you.”

Harvey expects Mike’s protests that follow – the small, self-deprecating shake of his head, the objection to the mere implication of him ever loving or being loved by anyone who is somebody else – and smiles sadly, because he knows Mike is wrong, but Mike doesn’t. Because he doesn’t notice the people around him the way Harvey does, and he hasn’t seen the way they fall a little in love with him every single day. With his smile, his blue eyes, the way he stumbles over his words when he’s nervous, how he pretend-laughs at an insult, the way he memorizes dates and facts and numbers and then delivers them all in a sharp-witted retort that leaves opposing counsel speechless – and a little floored. Sometimes at parties, people would look around to see if he was with anyone, and Harvey would step a little closer to silently tell them _yes._ And remarkably, Mike would go on talking and never notice that he’d swept everyone in the room off their feet.

Harvey continues, still stroking Mike’s face in a soothing rhythm. “And when they do – and they will – let them. And when they tell you they love you, believe them. Okay?”

Mike’s reply isn’t forthcoming. His face contorts in distress when he forces himself to gasp, _“Okay.”_

“Promise me.”

 _“I promise.”_ he says, tears soaking his face as he leans into Harvey’s hand and then into his chest. He wraps an arm around him, just above a thick blanket that covers him from his waist to his feet, apparently concealing the horrible, third-degree truth that Mike knows is there but hasn’t been allowed to see. The line of that blanket at Harvey’s hip seems to divide him into two people: one who is pale and tired, but who speaks and listens and looks otherwise okay – as though he has a mild strain of the flu – and one who is scalded so severely, he was slated to die the moment it happened.

“I love you so much,” Harvey mumbles, words heavy with morphine and regret. He’s looking up at the ceiling while running his hand through Mike’s soft hair and wishing he’d done so more often, wanting to take back every meeting, erase every client, undo every obligation that ever cut his moments with Mike short. He knows they never took their time together for granted, not with how afraid Mike was of loss, but if there is anything that makes him wonder or want to rewind and sleep in a little longer, hold Mike a little tighter, kiss a little slower, and work a little less – dying is it.

“Do you know how much?”

Mike nods against his chest and sniffles. “More than anything?” he asks, voice muffled.

Harvey stills his hand in Mike’s hair. “You got it, rookie.”

The pain is dull now, but breathing is difficult. He thinks hazily about the box and the note he left at home. He doesn’t bring it up. When a tear runs down his cheek, he’s grateful it goes unseen.

Mike breathes hard, “I love you too,” he whimpers.

They stay that way for a while, in silence that might be comfortable if it weren’t so damning, and then Harvey speaks.

 _“Mike…”_ He says it in a way that he’s never said anything else: with a level of loyalty, affection, and commitment so great it feels like a thousand pounds of steel on his tongue. He asks it with an understated plea for absolution – because he promised to stay, and though this may not be his fault, he’s leaving just the same. He breathes it like it’s the one sacred word left in his vocabulary; like it’s a verse in a bible they both believe in.

Harvey whispers Mike’s name like it’s the beginning and the end of everything.

Hearing his name on Harvey’s lips, like an unfinished sentence – like the first word in the middle of a story that was still being written – is the hair on the trigger finger of grief that Mike’s been hovering over all day. He loses it. He sobs openly, loudly, desperately; pent-up pain free-flowing with absolutely nothing that can be done to stop it.

Everything Mike has ever thought felt like hell was wrong. There are moments in his life that came close, but it’s not until now that he realizes what it truly is. And it’s this, right here, right now. It’s this white, sparse room. It’s the clock ticking away their final minutes together, like the timer to a bomb, as Harvey’s breathing shallows. It’s the grisly end result of a red light run 2.4 seconds too soon. It’s the crying and the irony and the pervasive sense of dread that Mike can feel all the way inside his veins like poison. It’s the ethereality of the floor shifting under him; his entire world tilting on its axis, leaving him hollow, helpless, and alone. It’s the loud flat-lining that pierces his ears and sends him over the edge, screaming at the top of his lungs into a chest he can’t hear a heartbeat in anymore.

Hell is the Burn Unit. And all Mike can do is watch while it takes everything he has.

 

*

 

Mike tries to sleep, if only because both his mind and body are completely spent, but he’s kept awake for hours by persistent thoughts of the accident. He relives the ambulance ride from the day before with startling lucidity, over and over, recalling how Harvey grabbed his hand – out of fear or pain or both, Mike still isn’t sure – and pulled the oxygen mask off his face.

_No machines._

He seemed to know before anyone else that his condition was serious.

As luck would have it, the sound of air being forcibly pushed into Harvey’s lungs with a rhythmic hiss is what eventually lulls Mike to sleep that night.

In the morning, the same sound, coupled with Donna’s voice, is what wakes him.

She finds him in a twisted pile between two chairs that a nurse put together for him the night before. He wakes up slowly, and then all at once, the situation and the reality of where he is flooding back to him.

Donna puts her hand on his sweat-soaked forehead and frowns.

“You’re burning up,” she tells him, tone maternal and worried. “You need to go home and sleep, Mike. In a bed.”

“I won’t leave,” he tells her stubbornly, sitting up and planting both feet on the ground as if she might actually try and force him away from Harvey’s side.

But Donna just sighs and points, “Mike, you’re exhausted. You being here, feeling like this, it isn’t helping him,” her voice is soft. She pulls one of the chairs from beside him and sits down. “I’ll take over, okay?”

It takes a little more prodding, if not demanding, but eventually Mike nods. He turns around when he gets to the door.

“I didn’t mean to do this,” he admits. His voice is hardly a croak; wrecked from crying and screaming and a lack of decent sleep. “But I…I’m not sorry, Donna, I’m not. I couldn’t just stand there and do _nothing.”_

“Oh,” Donna gives him a weak, empathetic smile. “I know that.”

Mike walks out of the hospital without looking back.

 

*

 

It’s 7 in the morning on Saturday by the time Mike gets home. He closes the door behind him and just sags against it for several minutes, his body heavy with fatigue and confusion. He can’t wrap his mind around everything that’s transpired in the past twenty-four hours and he has no idea how he went from standing on a sidewalk, feeling like the luckiest man in the world, to _this._ _How does that even happen?_

He does know, that, technically, he was supposed to stand by and watch as staff did nothing; watch as they didn’t touch the defibrillator or push drugs or pull out an intubation tray – nothing. Because Harvey didn’t want to be brain dead in a hospital with third degree burns, breathing indefinitely through a ventilator. It was a reasonable request. Anyone would understand that when faced with such grim options, death sounded infinitely more forgiving.

Mike promised. He promised in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, through a fit of incoherent tears, and he promised again and again after that, every time Harvey had asked.  

He knows he was supposed to let him go, because he had power of attorney, because he’d signed all the paperwork, including a DNR, and because supposedly it was the right thing to do.

And for eleven seconds, Mike kept his promise.

For eleven seconds, he cried against Harvey’s chest, and gasped and choked on his own saliva, and stood up and listened to the monitor droning out that unmistakable signal of lifelessness. He thought that the past seven hours and twenty nine minutes had been enough to prepare him to make the decision he was entrusted with because Harvey couldn’t make it for himself.

He was wrong.

The permanence of what was happening hit him with a force he didn’t even see coming – like _he_ was the one that had been hit by a car.

 _“Do something!”_ he screamed. He felt like he was watching himself from the corner of the room. And even then he doubted if what he was doing was right. Still he couldn’t get a handle on any remaining self-control long enough to stop screaming.

The staff tried to console him, explaining again and again that he signed the documents that upheld Harvey’s wishes not to be kept alive by artificial means. But even through all of his panic, Mike’s brain found a split-second to function normally – and he was able to realize how much power he still had. It didn’t matter what he’d signed or agreed to earlier – legally, it was his call.

 _“I don’t care!”_ he shouted. “I changed my mind! Do something! _Please_ , I’m begging you, please do something. I’ll sign new papers _, just fucking give them to me!”_

He remembers that around him were a few solemn head shakes and hushed whispers circulating things like _Is this the lawyer?I think they’re both lawyers –_ and – _This is a lawsuit waiting to happen. Someone get him the papers. –_ and – _Get the crash cart, now!_

Just like that, a mob of scrubs and white coats descended on Harvey as though they themselves couldn’t stand doing nothing and had only been waiting for permission to intervene. Mike looked on in both relief and horror as they shocked and pumped his chest and push various cardiac drugs until they gained a rhythm, and then funneled a tube into his throat. It was medicine, but it looked brutal.

When it was all said and done, Harvey was transferred to another part of the burn unit, reserved for those on life support. Mike followed in an exhausted, shell-shocked trance and after a bit, a nurse took pity on him, brought him water and the chairs he used for his makeshift bed beside Harvey’s.

Mike gasps at the memory of the previous night. On cue, pain shoots up his shoulder and into his neck from the uncomfortable position he was curled in, and he rubs it absently before forcing himself to stand up straight. The sun is shining in through the windows, flooding the living room in harsh light, and it all just feels like a giant slap in the face.

Walking is a struggle, since most of his energy was expended on the way home and only out of a necessity to get here. But he shuffles forward, needing to close the blinds, needing to drown the apartment in darkness, needing – for some reason – for it to feel as badly as he does.

He stops when he spots the _Legal Eagles_ DVD that he purposely left on the coffee table in preparation of movie night. There’s also a small box beside it that he definitely did not leave there.

Friday is gone now, and the potential of all future nights ever being spent with Harvey on the couch in front of the TV look bleak, if not impossible. But Mike is too worn out and still in shock to even think that far ahead, which is probably for the best.

He picks up the box out of a vague curiosity that bleeds through his numbness. It’s too bright to read what’s been written on top, and he’s too distracted to bother with the blinds now. Instead he turns and wills his legs to take him to the bedroom, where the curtains are closed and he can see. At the same time, memories of their first Friday night – as a real couple – rush back to him.

Harvey had rolled his eyes when Mike picked _Raging Bull_ off the shelf, because he’d seen it seventeen times, but when Mike turned his back, he smiled.

Mike left the task of starting it to him and went to the door to get the pizza. Harvey was flustered when he came back to the living room.

_You’re going to have to do this. I don’t know how._

_What? Harvey it’s your own TV._

_Yeah, I know, but I hit the wrong button and now the screen is black._

_But it’s…_

_Mike!_

_Okay, okay, move. Let the younger generation help._

Harvey stood up and pointed a finger at Mike’s chest, and in his best New Yorker, said, ‘ _Mike, don’t start your shit. I mean it, don’t start.’_

Mike laughed and shoved him out of the way. He had the movie on in ten seconds, and a few minutes after that they were settled on the couch with dinner.

_How’d you do that so fast?_

_I don’t know, Harvey, I just, like, pushed this huge button called_ _PLAY._

_‘You just shut up. I’ll fucking take care of you later.’_

Mike scoffed. _I think you need to make up your mind. I mean, are you Pesci or DeNiro?_

_DeNiro._

_I’m not Pesci._

_What’s wrong with Pesci?_

_Um, he’s playing your brother?_

_And?_

_And I’m much hotter than him?_

Harvey hesitated as if thinking it over, and then nodded. _I’ll give you that._

Triumphant, Mike sat back with a grin. They watched the movie and ate in relative but completely comfortable silence. By the end of it Mike was slumping backward into the couch and fighting back a yawn – he’d been up since six. He turned his head to the left, just slightly, but it was enough that his face made contact with Harvey’s shoulder. Part of him expected Harvey to tense, or pull away. After all, this occasion seemed wildly domestic considering their two week history which, so far, consisted almost exclusively of sex and one date. And, of course, work.

But Harvey didn’t pull away at all.

_Maybe we could make this a thing._

Mike peeked up from his shoulder but didn’t move. It was comfortable, and more than that he wanted to see how long he could get away with resting there. _Really?_

Harvey shrugged. _Sure._

_You mean like a tradition?_

_If that’s what you want to call it. Yeah._

Mike thought for a moment. Tonight’s celebration was spurred by a particularly difficult case they’d won and the thought of reserving a night that was strictly for the two of them and had nothing at all to do with work, made his heart thump. He nodded against Harvey’s shoulder.

_Yes._

_Yes?_

_Yeah, I wanna do it. …‘Then if we win, we win…’_

Harvey raised his beer and laughed softly, _‘And if we lose, we still win.’_

Mike smiled and wrapped one arm around his chest. He felt a little like he was still testing the waters since it had been such a short time since they’d crossed the line from professional to personal, at least more than usual, but it also seemed like he was getting the green light to take things from casual to…whatever this was. Honestly, he wasn’t sure.   

_Next time, you pick out the movie._

_And the food,_ Harvey said. _I’m supposed to be deterring this college-orphan-pizza habit, not promoting it._ Noticing the sleepy way Mike leaned against him and the quiet sigh after he spoke, he added, _Tired, rookie?_

Mike mumbled something indiscernible against him, so Harvey carefully peeled him off, stood up, and stretched out his hand.

_Come on, then, let’s go to sleep._

Mike took his hand and followed him to bed. It was the first night that they literally only slept. When Mike woke up the next morning, one leg hooked around Harvey’s, he silently promised that if this one good thing in his life could be kept from going bad, or leaving, or ending, then he would spend the rest of his life repenting for anything at all he thought he might have ever done wrong.

 

The warmth of that night, and the safety of it all, is something Mike won’t ever forget. But it’s the feeling that what’s happened is all his fault that startles him back to the present. He’s still clutching the box he found, trying to sort through the fog in his brain long enough to open it. All he can think is that Harvey’s life was, at least relatively speaking, a picture of success and organization; the result of hard work and discipline, until one Mike Ross came along like a fucking tornado and gave him six hundred and forty three problems he never asked for. And apparently, this is where it’s gotten them both. It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so unbearably sad.

 _“Fuck,”_ Mike mutters, feeling a brand new wave of emotion hit him. It’s exhaustion, shock, grief, and guilt all flooding his system at once. Part of him knows what’s in the box and part of him wants to open it and the rest of him wants to throw it out the window. When he looks at it, though, he can hardly get past what is written in metallic on the top.

_You told me I was the best thing that ever happened to you… It’s the other way around, rookie._

He pries it open with trembling hands and a shaky breath. When he sees the ring, it’s through a stream of tears that cloud his vision and that he can’t seem to claw from his eyes before new ones take their place. Frustrated and completely drained, Mike can only stare uselessly until he finally closes the box and sets it on the nightstand. He lies down on the bed with his face in the crook of his arm, and cries, long and hard, one final thought settling in before his mind drifts and his body vies desperately for sleep.

Friday would have been the best day of his life — if it hadn’t been the worst.

 

*


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's a long way to go, kids

*

He spends two weeks in bed, more or less. He moves to drink water – or whiskey – on occasion, and piss, but otherwise, Mike’s face stays planted in the center of Harvey’s pillow until it’s so drenched with tears he’s forced to alternate between it and his own. He can’t even bring himself to step out of the apartment, let alone drag himself back to the grim intensive care wing of the hospital, and for that he believes he may actually die of guilt alone. _What kind of horrible person does the exact opposite of someone’s dying wish and then abandons them after the fact?_

Mike feels disgusting and spineless.

He can’t pretend that he made the right call. He isn’t delusional. When the doctors told him that Harvey’s brain function would in all likelihood deteriorate, he believed them. When they told him his condition was grave and that the chances of him ever recovering at all, even to some sub-par level, were _highly unlikely –_ Mike believed them. He knows that he panicked that night and aside from his immediate descend into this exhausted, depressive state, he can’t sit at Harvey’s bedside listening to those enraging beeps and sighs as if there is hope.

Still, however, because he is human, he rallies against the thoughts in his head that berate him. He fights back silently but relentlessly, repeating over and over that he didn’t give up. He did not give up. If that is the only silver lining in what his conscience keeps insisting was a horribly selfish and ill-executed act of love – then it’s at least more than he has otherwise.

 

Donna shows up and he tries not to let his petulance get the best of him. He knows this isn’t easy for her either. And there isn’t really anyone else lining up to check on him. Rachel moved to California months ago, and Trevor and Jenny are figures of the past. In fact, he hasn’t talked to either of them in nearly four years. His list of friends is pitiful, and through his grief he manages to understand that it won’t help to burn any remaining bridges.

He lets her in when she comes by, though she is forced, every visit, to follow him to the bedroom when he retreats down the hall in a haze of post-traumatic stress. She manages to convince him to eat something, meager though it is, on a few occasions, which proves to at least keep him alive.

“You should come back to work, Mike,” she says softly one day, after sitting beside him for a long time in silence. They share this pain, though it’s different for both of them.

Mike is staring out the window, clutching Harvey’s pillow close.

“No thanks,” he says flatly.

“I think you should try,” she continues gently. “Just get out of here for a while. Try a half-day. Jessica said anything you can manage is fine. Maybe if you’re around people you’ll—”

 _“What?”_ Mike snaps, though he doesn’t bother turning to face her. “Feel _better?”_

Donna sighs. “I just think it’s…it’s what Harvey would want, Mike.”

He’s trying not to ruin this; trying not to push away the only person left who gives a damn whether he wakes up in the morning or eats a gun, but it’s hard. It’s really, really hard. Every word is like a slap in the face. _Do this, do that. Try. Try harder. You’re pathetic._ It doesn’t matter if it isn’t what’s being spoken. It’s what he hears, and that’s all that counts.

He rolls over angrily.

“How the fuck would _you_ know what Harvey would want?”

Donna winces. Mike’s words are harsh, bitter; nothing like the anti-social but soft-spoken disaster she’d grown used to see occupying the apartment for the better half of a month. She knows it isn’t intentional, and if she thought about it longer, she wouldn’t respond the way she does. But emotions are a knee-jerk thing, and it happens before she can reconsider.

“I lost someone that day too, Mike,” she tells him, her voice straddling a line between cold and hurt.

He hardly lets her finish before cutting in and shouting, “You lost a _friend!”_

 “My _best_ friend.”

Mike shakes his head, angry tears finding their way to raw, bloodshot eyes. His voice cracks as he’s reminded that Harvey wasn’t just _someone_ to him – he was _everyone_. He was his friend. His rock. His teacher. His boss, colleague, lifeline, emergency contact. He was his sure thing, his constant – the only god damn solid ground he’s ever known.

As far as Mike is concerned, Harvey was his past and his present and his future.

“He was my best friend, too,” he explains, “And my fiancé.”

Donna opens her mouth to speak but Mike continues.

“I know you lost someone, but I lost _everything!”_ He pauses and takes a deep breath but it’s a futile attempt at fighting back a sob _. “Donna,”_ he gasps. “I lost _everything._   He’s my whole life, don’t you get it? I don’t _have_ anyone else!”

Mike pulls the pillow to his face and cries. It feels like it’s the millionth time. Every muscle in his face throbs.

“Oh, Mike…” Donna whispers, putting a hand gently on the back of his neck. “He…proposed?”

“He didn’t get the…the _chance,”_ Mike brokenly sobs, pulling his head back to look up. His chest heaves as he points to the small box sitting on the bedside table. It’s in the same place he set it two weeks ago and it’s been taunting him ever since; a dismal symbol of what could have been.

They sit together for a while, Donna’s hand moving from his neck to his shoulder in a constant, supportive gesture. Mike’s crying dies down, the aftermath evidenced in shaky breaths and a near-catatonic expression.

“I’m sorry,” he says at one point, voice wrecked and a little guilty. “I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

Donna simply looks at him with empathy.

“It’s just…he didn’t want me to go back.”

“What are you saying, Mike?”

“He doesn’t…he didn’t want…” Mike shakes his head, frustrated. “He told me to quit. To go back to school.”

“Then that’s what you should do.” Donna tells him. 

Mike stares ahead, nodding very slowly, almost robotically. Donna’s right – he should. He doesn’t need the stress. Neither does she, or Jessica for that matter. He _should_ quit – while his secret is still safe, for the most part; locked up in minds of a handful of people who either won’t tell or can’t. _Should_ cut his losses while he’s ahead, or, technically, not so far behind yet that he’s locked up. He should do all future clients a break and not get his name anywhere near their cases. But then again, he should do a lot of things – like eat, wash his hair, check the mail, go outside – but he can’t see the point. Quitting, by now, is probably inevitable. But school seems impossible and emphatically unimportant. In fact, the concept of doing anything meaningful is lost on him, because he no longer sees the meaning in anything.

After a few more minutes, Donna takes her hand off his shoulder and pats his knee.

“Listen,” she says. “Whether you come back or you don’t, it’s your decision. You don’t have to make it today. But I need you to take care of yourself, Mike. I’m about to start working for a new senior partner and I’m not gonna be able to slip away and come over here. I don’t want to worry that you’re not eating enough, or that you’re taking too many sleeping pills every night and chasing it with that scotch that’s sitting on the counter. Okay? Mike? Look at me.”

Mike breaks his trance. “Okay,” he agrees weakly.

It doesn’t sound like much of a promise, but Donna figures it’s the best she can hope for in this situation.

“I’ve been…meaning to pack up his things,” she says. “But I keep staring at his office and I…just can’t. It’s like I keep expecting him to walk back in.”

“I’ll do it.” Mike leans back and shifts onto his stomach, staring past Donna at another wall. Ambivalence consumes him. The grief is almost like a mask of some kind, and underneath it, there’s absolutely nothing left to him at all.

“Are you sure?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he responds, nodding against a pillow. His voice is miles away.

Donna watches him, concerned. Eventually, with her lunch hour drawing to a close and endless work to do for Pearson Darby’s newest addition, she stands up to leave. Mike’s voice stops her.

 “Who are they?”

“What?” she asks.

Mike turns, but only a little. “Well, you said you start working for a new senior partner and obviously Jessica has replaced him…so I was wondering who.”

 “She didn’t really have a choice, honey. Harvey’s clients have to go somewhere, and she’d rather it not be another firm.”

Mike’s nod is minute, but present. It’s still difficult to tell if it’s out of understanding, or resentment.

From the doorway, Donna sighs sadly.

“Bryant Caldwell. Out of Atlanta, I think—”

“Atlanta.” Mike scoffs.

“I’ve only met him once,” Donna adds. “He seems okay. Went to Harvard, of course. Did criminal law for a little while before going corporate. That’s…that’s all that I know, Mike. I’m sorry.”

Criminal law to corporate seems like quite the jump, and Mike almosts comments on it. In the end, however, he doesn't care enough to. Donna lingers for a moment, in case he has more questions, but when he grows silent, she exits the apartment quietly.

Mike shifts his gaze to the doorjamb of the bathroom, and eventually it, too, begins to blur out of focus. He realizes how quiet the place is; how deathly still and undisturbed it is now that Harvey is gone. And yet, he remembers that there’s still day-old coffee sitting in the machine, unfinished paperwork on the table, and an empty pizza box on the floor – all evidence of their late nights spent working and laughing. It’s like someone paused Mike’s life, pulled Harvey out of it, and pressed play. Everything looks the same, but nothing really is.

He struggles to remember what Harvey said before he got in the car. It comes to him, abruptly, and he shoves his face into the pillow to muffle his frustrated scream.

_I’ll be back soon._

“Fuck, Harvey,” he grits out. _“Liar.”_

The pillow smells heavily of Harvey’s hair and cologne and sweat, and finally Mike can’t take it anymore. He rips it from beneath him and throws it across the room in a fit of converging anger and denial. Then he forces himself up, into the kitchen, to pour the remaining whisky into a glass that he tries long and hard not to break.

When he returns to their room, his eyes fall again on the charcoal box sitting on the table next to the bed. Cautiously, like what it simply represents is more than enough to injure him, he picks it up. Again he reads the words written on top, and again they’re a collective punch to his stomach:

_You once told me I was the best thing that ever happened to you – it’s the other way around, rookie._

A brand new lump forms in Mike’s throat. He opens the box and runs his finger over the ring. It’s simple, but it’s perfect: dark silver, flawlessly smooth, with a single, rectangular blue rhinestone along the front. He can tell that it’s horribly expensive as well, but it wouldn’t matter to him if it wasn’t.

On the inside, in tiny but sharp text, is an engraving he didn’t see before:

MORE THAN ANYTHING

Mike’s breath catches. He pauses and then shudders, sitting on the edge of the bed to keep from falling to his knees.

The ring slides onto his finger perfectly, like on his hand and his hand alone is exactly where it was meant to be, and he stares at it for a while, runs his finger over the smooth surface until his bottom lip starts to quiver. 

He picks up the scotch, tilts it to his mouth, finishing it off in one swallow before hurling the empty glass as viciously as he can against the nearest wall.

He goes to sleep and leaves the glass on the floor. 

*


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this part brought to you by unlikely coincidences, pretentious names, and low blood sugar.

*

Mike forces himself into the land of the living, to some degree, the following Thursday.

He starts by warding off a panic attack by downing two anti-anxiety pills, a prescription that he owes to his recent breakdown. It works, but only just barely.

In the shower, he stands with his head against the wall and his eyes closed, letting the water hit him in streams that are way too hot. There’s no reason for it, except that he’ll never know what Harvey truly went through and this is the closest he can get to it without literally lighting himself on fire. It’s irrational and self-destructive, but it’s also very much who he is.

Sometimes, in the morning, he would run late and have only just enough time to soap up and rinse off. But other days he could slow down, stand in the steam without worrying about the time, and tilt his head back while the water rushed around his ears and drowned out all of his thoughts. After that the only thing that would pull Mike back to reality was the creak of the glass as the door slid open and Harvey stepped in, wrapped his arms around his chest and pulled him back against him.

Standing under a cascade of warm water with his eyes closed and his head resting back on Harvey’s shoulder – trusting him completely to keep him from falling – Mike was at his most vulnerable. Yet those are the moments that he recalls feeling utterly invincible.

Today is a painful antithesis to those mornings. There’s no creak of the door, no strong, familiar arms tugging him into an embrace, no hot breath on his neck, no whisper in his ear that comes out as _good morning_ but sounds like forever. Today, there’s him and there’s no one else.

Mike gets dressed on autopilot. He doesn’t realize that his shirt shrugs a little bit off of his shoulder and may not even actually be his, until he’s already outside – and by that point he doesn’t care. He isn’t going to work to actually work and he isn’t trying to impress anyone. The shirt is loose and comfortable and it smells like home, and nothing else particularly matters.  

 

When he finally gets off of the elevator, he’s met with a dozen stares. He knows the ones that he can’t quite see out of his peripheral vision are still there because he can practically feel them seeping through his body. Most of them are sympathetic, kind, and fleeting. Others linger on him longer, a little colder; cultivated by pity or morbid curiosity, like onlookers watching the aftermath of a train wreck. It’s fitting, Mike decides, since that’s exactly what he feels like.

Donna sees him first as he approaches her desk. Her face falls. She was hoping that if Mike left the apartment he might look or feel a fraction more alive, but his face is still pale and his eyes are still desperately sad. It’s evident that he’s losing weight he can’t afford to lose. His expression tells her that coming here is not an act of self-preservation, but simply a means to an end.

“Hey, Mike,” she greets gently.

He gives her a small nod of acknowledgement and briefly rests his hands on the ledge above her desk.

“I really appreciate you doing this,” she tells him, after a moment. “I can’t seem to find ten spare minutes around here lately.”

Mike nods again, sullen. He doesn’t think anyone else should be responsible for packing Harvey’s office up, but it doesn’t mean it won’t still be incredibly difficult for him. He stares past the desk into the room where he spent so much of his time – so much of his _life,_ really – to find that it’s occupied by someone else, and that someone else is standing by a desk Mike doesn’t recognize, holding a phone to their ear. He doesn’t see Harvey’s desk anywhere, and many of his things have been moved to one side of the room.

It feels like someone has trespassed in a way that’s so violating, Mike would’ve preferred they just take out his soul instead. It would feel like a lesser crime.

“Where’s his desk?” he asks, and he can’t mask the way that his tone sounds offended and hurt on a dozen levels.

“I’m not sure,” Donna replies. “It’s been gone about a week now. I can check with Jessica if you want.”

Mike shakes his head. “No. I’ll do it. I need to talk to her anyway.”

Donna raises an eyebrow but he doesn’t elaborate. Eventually she motions toward the office.

“He’s probably going to be on the phone a while,” she says. “You can go in.”

Mike wants to get this over with. Ordinarily he would want to spend as much time as he could in Harvey’s office because it was a kind of home away from home. It was comfortable and routine and safe. But knowing they would probably never be in it again together – never have epiphanies while going over a case, never eat takeout on the couch at night while discussing love or law or office politics – makes it a place Mike isn’t sure he ever wants to be again.

“Are you sure?” he asks, mildly alarmed. He wouldn’t dream of walking into someone’s office unannounced on his own. In fact, it took him a while before he was even allowed to do that with Harvey.

But Donna nods firmly and gives a dismissive wave toward the man standing in the office by a foreign desk.

“He doesn’t care,” she says, and then whispers conspiratorially, “Must be an Atlanta thing.”

Mike appreciates her attempt to make him feel better, but there’s an ache in his chest the size of New England that he is certain is permanent.

Guarded, he heads for the door, only to stop short at the name on the glass that he doesn’t recognize. He’s heard it once, five days ago when Donna told him, but seeing it in print is another story. It sits at the same eye-level height as Harvey’s did, but it knocks the wind right out of him.

BRYANT CALDWELL  
SENIOR PARTNER

Mike opens his mouth to protest, but stops. Because – what for? What would he say? Who would he say it to? Donna had no role in this, Jessica had no choice in it, and he doesn’t believe in God – so who else is left? There’s a brief pause in which he realizes that there is actually no one to blame for the fact that Harvey’s office _isn’t_ Harvey’s office anymore. And the stranger inside it, and all the replaced furniture, isn’t some kind of prank or temporary change. It’s reality, and it’s precisely what he’s finding impossible to cope with.

In spite of himself – and because more than ever he wants to collect Harvey’s things – _their things_ – and get the hell out of Pearson Darby – he forces himself through the door.

There are a few empty boxes on the floor beside the couch that Mike figures Donna has put there for him. He sighs and walks toward them, trying to tune out the conversation going on in the background. He surveys the items still in their place and the ones that have been moved into a cluster by or on the couch. He’s still wondering where to start when he hears a phone click down and a man clear his throat.

“Hi.”

The voice startles him, and he turns in its direction. He has a reason to be nervous. If Harvey taught him anything, it’s that lawyers can be particularly territorial, over both offices and people.

But to Mike’s surprise, the man simply walks toward him and outstretches his hand.

“Bryant Caldwell.”

Mike can’t bring himself to say _nice to meet you,_ but he gives a polite nod and shakes his hand anyway. “Mike…Ross.”

“I figured,” the man says.

For a second, Mike wonders if the entire firm now regards him as the remaining, broken half of Harvey’s life, but when Caldwell nods toward Donna, he understands why he knows who he is. He makes an effort not to take it all personally, and after a moment he turns back to the boxes he’s yet to pack.

“I would say that I’m sorry,” Caldwell adds from behind him. “But I know it’s not my place.”

Mike listens, and if it were someone else, he might be tempted to respond with something like, _You’re right, it isn’t._ But Caldwell’s voice is kind and surprisingly normal given the massively egotistical New York shark tank he’s just plunged into. And as a result, for the first time in nearly three weeks, Mike has a good enough reason to hold back his hostility. After all, Caldwell didn’t do anything to him. He didn’t run a red light at 3:37PM and slam into the back of a Lincoln Towncar, trapping both of its passengers in a fiery blaze while Mike stared on in horror. He didn’t put Ray in the ICU for four days. He didn’t put Harvey in the burn unit. He didn’t put the man Mike loves on life support. All he did was take his office. And it’s a difficult task, but Mike tries to separate culpability from happenstance. He tries to start thinking before hurling blame at strangers.

Not trusting his own mouth, however, he decides to just keep quiet.

“Anyway,” Caldwell continues, motioning toward the boxes near Mike’s feet. “Take all the time you need.”

Mike looks down at the floor for a moment. “Thank you,” he says quietly. He hasn’t even been out of the house in weeks – he’ll take all the humanity someone will afford him at this point.

Caldwell nods and returns to his desk.

Tediously, Mike puts Harvey’s belongings into the boxes. He tries to be efficient, despite Caldwell’s words, but he ends up feeling like he’s operating in slow motion. It’s hard not to run his fingers in reverence over every baseball, every book, pen, and paperweight. Eventually he carries the last one out and sets it on top of the others just outside the door.

“When you’re ready, I’ll help you bring them down,” Donna offers.

He nods appreciatively.

“Is Ray waiting?”

Mike’s expression sobers. “I told him to just give me a little time and call when he’s on his way back.”

Donna frowns. “How is he doing anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Mike admits. “This is the first time I’ve seen him since the, uh…since it happened. I told him not to worry about it but he said he wanted to help and that Harvey paid him through April anyway, so…”

He stands there for a moment, arms at his side, hopelessly looking from Donna to the stack of boxes. There’s still a sense of disillusionment that he can’t quite get beyond, the disbelief that this is even happening; the feeling that this can’t _possibly_ be his life now. But every few minutes that familiar burden of dread settles onto his shoulders and he’s reacquainted with the truth that it is – that he is in fact in a nightmare he doesn’t see himself ever waking up from. It takes all of his self-control just to keep from throwing up.

“Um, excuse me, Mike?”

He sees Caldwell standing several feet away just inside the doorway to the office, and turns to acknowledge him, trying instinctively to size him up but lacking the interest or the will. Besides, there isn’t anything overt about the man that suggests he’s any one extreme personality. In fact, he seems incredibly mild mannered, which Mike considers an interesting change of pace in an office overflowing with Type As.

“There were a few things in Mr. Specter’s desk, I…” Caldwell looks from Mike to Donna and back again, almost worriedly. It’s not timidity, by any means. Mild uncertainty, maybe, and respect.

Mike follows when he’s motioned back inside.

“I didn’t expect them to move his things out so quickly,” Caldwell explains. “I know they were just trying to accommodate me, but I want you to know that I didn’t rush this. I told Jessica that I’d be perfectly content in a smaller office. In fact, in Atlanta I worked out of a cubicle for six months while we renovated.”

Mike makes a small sound of amusement. Even he didn’t make six months in a cubicle before spending the majority of his time working on Harvey’s couch. “Really?”

Caldwell nods and then shrugs. “Sure. Well, we were a small firm – it was before I went corporate – but…” he trails off, shaking his head. “You don’t want to know about that. Let me get you his things.”

He picks up a folder full of papers with a picture frame lying on top, and hands the stack to Mike.

“Thanks,” Mike says softly.

“Sure,” he replies. “I think you have the rest of what of was in there, they put it over where the other things were. This was all in the drawer on the right. I guess whoever emptied it just overlooked that one.”

Mike looks down at the framed picture and turns it over. It’s not unfamiliar. In fact, until recently it sat on top of Harvey’s desk – a candid of them that Donna snapped at a Christmas party three years ago. In it, their shoulders are touching and they’re both laughing at the outrageous prediction she made that _If you two drink any more of that God-awful punch tonight, you’re going to wake up naked in bed together at 9:30 and the walk of shame is much more shameful when you’re walking to the same place. Don’t ask me for an alibi._ They rolled their eyes and scoffed and laughed it off and then at 10:45 the next morning they passed her desk in suspiciously staggered arrivals with their heads down.

_Pay up, Rookie._

Mike shoved a twenty dollar bill in Donna’s hand with a defeated sigh and hid out in Harvey’s office to avoid being interrogated by Louis for his tardiness, and also because he had some interesting bruises in places that he was finding difficult to conceal.

Harvey was a little more fun because he was supposed to have left the party early with Jessica to discuss their impending meeting. He crowded into Donna’s space that morning and whispered quickly.

_If I overnight you a Marni bag, will you tell Jessica I got food poisoning from the hors d’oeuvres?_

Donna hummed and pretended to file her nails while Harvey got increasingly desperate. It was Academy stuff, really.

_Donna!_

_Okay._

_So you’ll do it?_

_Sure._

Harvey sighed in relief and turned toward his office, stopping short when he heard her voice again, loud and exaggerated.

_Boy, Harvey, that was_ some _shrimp cocktail last night, wasn’t it? It must have been old. Which is_ not _how you like…your…_ food.

Jessica was striding up toward them and Harvey made wide eyes at Donna, who continued, clearly amused.

_You look like you’ve been up_ all _night. Is Mike sick too? I think he had the same thing. Was he able to keep it all down?_

Harvey rolled his eyes at her. Jessica raised an eyebrow.

_Good morning, Harvey. Donna’s right, you look exhausted. I don’t want any excuses on why you missed our review last night. I trust you’ve prepared for this meeting on your own._

Harvey nodded firmly. _Absolutely._

_Good._

Jessica turned and left and Harvey let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Donna returned to her work and began typing away, calling casually over her shoulder.

_Two Marni bags and next Friday off._

_Fine._

Mike still remembers the night of the party, drunk as he was, because there are some memories that even copious amounts of liquor couldn’t keep from being seared into his brain, as if he was born with them already there. He remembers the hard, breathless kissing, the desperate, messy groping and tearing of expensive clothes like they were two teenagers who just couldn’t wait any longer. He remembers Harvey’s hands all over him and the way he picked him up like he weighed nothing, pushed him onto the bed and pinned him down because he knew Mike wouldn’t mind. He remembers the sounds and the feelings and the sweat and never second-guessing any of it. And maybe it was because the alcohol had destroyed his inhibitions or because his brain was buzzing or because he was living only in the present, but what he remembers more than that is how it all just felt _right_. It felt like it was supposed to happen; that they would’ve ended up there anyway and that the party and the punch had all just been a catalyst that had gotten them to that moment a little bit sooner.

Mike woke up in the morning with a killer hangover and Harvey’s arm around his waist.

_I owe Donna twenty bucks._

_I owe her about two thousand._

_Worth it._

Harvey’s voice was heavy with sleep when he put his mouth against Mike’s ear and whispered.

_Totally worth it._

Mike shakes his head and the picture comes back into focus. For a second, he almost smiles. Almost.

Caldwell’s voice breaks in again. “I heard what happened and I wanted to make sure nothing got lost when they took the desk, so I checked and…Anyway, I hope you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” Mike says, looking up before realizing his eyes are misty. “Thank you.”

“No problem.”

Mike gives him a nod and turns to leave. He slows when he notices a business card that was pinned beneath the frame, slide to the side of the stack of papers and then fall off. Caldwell stoops to pick it up and hand it back to him.

“Thanks,” Mike tells him, before turning to leave.

Caldwell calls out one more time before he can make it out the door.

“Look, Mike…” he starts, hesitant. “I know that I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, and forgive me if I’m completely out of line here but…”

Mike braces himself for a trite condolence from someone who probably feels obligated to say something if only to mask how awkward they feel in his presence, since he figures he probably permeates sadness and seclusion at this point.

It doesn’t come.

Instead, Caldwell says, “I was wondering if you still work here or if you’ve considered coming back. I’m…I’m only asking because I was told you were the best and—well, right now I’m borrowing associates from Louis Litt which is…Well, let’s just say it’s less than ideal.”

Mike stares back, a little surprised. He rubs the business card in his fingers back and forth, and he isn’t sure if it’s out of discomfort or relief.

“Um…”

What the hell does he say? Donna is still responsible for feeding him and he hasn’t even mastered the art of dressing himself in his own clothes again. Between all of the time he’s spent tossing and turning and drinking and crying, coming back to work isn’t something he’s given a whole lot of thought to. Jessica told him to take his time, and they’d left it at that.

He can tell Caldwell is waiting for an answer, but Mike doesn’t feel rushed. There’s an unfamiliar quality to him that Mike notices, without trying, is almost night and day from Harvey. Caldwell’s hair is dark and mostly neat, but it’s pushed back with minimal gel, if any, like he was in a hurry and didn’t have time to spend on it, which must mean was running late, or just didn’t care. His suit fits him well, but Mike can tell it isn’t custom or even tailored for that matter. It’s less rigid, less buttoned-up-and-pretentious – which is just fine since Harvey was really only the person who could pull that off anyway. Maybe it’s because he looks a few years younger than Harvey or maybe it’s a Southern thing, but either way, Mike is just grateful for the grace he’s gotten that’s made today’s ordeal a little bit easier to handle.

“I’m not sure,” he admits finally.

Caldwell puts up a hand. “I understand. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, it’s…It’s fine. I was going to talk to Jessica before I left anyway.” Mike thinks again about what Harvey told him to do – to go back to school – but only for a split-second since he isn’t interested in crying in front of strangers. He did enough of that in the street and at the hospital. “I just haven’t really decided what I’m doing, that’s all.”

What he’s doing. Coming back to work. Going to college. Living. Dying. Mike can’t be bothered to care about any of those things for five minutes, let alone long enough to actually pick one.

“Fair enough,” Caldwell says. “Maybe you could let me know. You know, if you decide. Not to rush you, of course.”

“Yeah, okay.”

He points to the boxes outside the door. “Can I help you with those?”

“Donna’s going to run them downstairs with me,” Mike tells him. “But…thank you, again.”

Caldwell gives him a small smile and turns away. Mike heads out of the office and takes a deep breath, his shoulders trembling as he does. An empty, nervous feeling settles in his stomach and he knows it’s probably from a lack of food and quality sleep, but he dismisses it.

“Ready?” Donna asks.

“Almost,” he says, setting down the paper and the picture frame on top of a box. “I’m…gonna go talk to Jessica. Is she in her office?”

Donna nods and Mike exhales and heads toward the hallway. He has no idea what he’s even going to say. So far he doesn’t quite remember how to plan more than a minute or two in advance and trying to do more than that is so overwhelming it makes him want to curl into a fetal position and die. It’s too much future to handle when it feels like Harvey doesn’t have one at all.

He’s within a yard of Jessica’s office when he finally remembers he’s still holding the business card he dropped earlier. He lifts his hand to look at it.

_Prescott Blake_   
_Managing Partner_   
_Wallace, Blake, & Schwartz_   
_Public International Law_   
_New York, NY_

From the corner of his eye, Mike can tell Jessica is waving him inside, but his head is swimming and he can’t seem to move. He realizes now, a little too late, that he overestimated his ability to face the day. The emotional toll of it all is finally hitting him. The energy it took to leave the apartment, to talk to strangers, to pack up the office like Harvey will never, ever set foot in it again – has drained him entirely. It's another reminder that their life together might have ended just as it was beginning.

When he does finally take a step forward, his legs fail. Tunnel vision sets in, he staggers briefly, and the hallway goes dark as he hits the floor.

*


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the reason for the delay is i really wasn't happy with this chapter but also too lazy to rewrite it and needed it for plot. what a struggle. anyway, hopefully it's acceptable and things should flow better after as my muse returns.... 
> 
> apologies for typos and legal inaccuracies. also added some tags~

*

For Mike, it’s all been too much: leaving the condo, packing Harvey’s things, meeting his replacement, even simply communicating with other people is more than he can handle. He thinks that if Caldwell had been less understanding and more abrasive, if Donna wasn’t carrying his torch, and if Jessica wasn’t giving him all this time to get his head together – he’d be walking out the door for good. The firm isn’t home, he knows that, and he’s still perpetually surprised that he and Harvey even treaded water as long as they did without being exposed. But a lot has happened in five years and whether or not Mike has much of a future at Pearson Darby Specter, it has – in a perverse, cutthroat, terrifying way – sort of become his family. And with Harvey still hopelessly comatose, it’s the only family he has left.

So when Jessica tells him that they would like for him to come back, that his presence is missed and needed and that his mind is a terrible thing to let flounder alone in an apartment – he concedes.

“I’m glad to hear it, Mike,” she says, clasping her hands. “Now, how’s your head?”

Mike nods and shifts the ice pack Donna brought him earlier. “It’s better now, thanks.”

“Pretty nasty fall you took.”

Mike shrugs.

Jessica studies him. “Donna tells me you haven’t been eating well. I have to say, it looks like she’s right.”

“Don’t really have much of an appetite,” he replies. “Do you?”

Jessica smiles, in a sad way, and shakes her head. “Not really, no.”

There’s a silence and Mike takes the icepack off of his head. Apparently, skipping dinner and then breakfast caused his sugar to drop so low he blacked out for several seconds, subconsciously breaking his fall with a knee and, unfortunately, also with his head. A passing associate had helped him up and into a chair in Jessica’s office, where he’d come to a few seconds later. She’d called Donna, who then brought him the ice pack and some crackers and juice from the break room, promptly lectured him on his less than acceptable eating habits, and tried hard to convince him to go to a hospital, in case he might be concussed. But Mike had just nodded, promised to eat, and politely but firmly declined a trip to the hospital. Donna was disappointed, but understanding, and after fussing over him and his bruised forehead as though he was Harvey’s most prized possession – which was true – she eventually left the room.

“Have you…um…seen him…recently?” Mike asks, finally breaking the silence but not looking up from his lap. The guilt of not returning to the hospital since the morning after the accident still consumes him, but the thought of seeing Harvey in the exact state he’d pleaded to avoid is, like everything else, too much. Mike can’t do it.

Jessica nods once. “This morning, in fact. Before work.”

Mike looks up, eyes wide in question.

“No change,” she says softly.

Mike isn’t surprised, but there’s still a wave of disappointment that comes with those words. He can’t shake it.

“You should go see him,” Jessica advises. “I think it would be good for you.”

“I…”

“I’m not telling you to sit beside him day in and day out and pretend he’s waking up. I’m telling you to go and see that he isn’t.”

“You…” Mike looks away for a second, eyes stinging at the realization. “You want me to pull the plug?”

Jessica’s voice is uncharacteristically gentle. “I want you to let him go.”

“Ohhh, right,” Mike laughs dryly. “Like you did? By the way, how did you find a replacement so soon? Couldn’t pick one of the empty offices downstairs, huh? It had to be _his_ , right?”

“You think I wanted to do it?” Jessica asks with a bitter smile. “Of _course_ I didn’t. I put it off for days. You know damn well that I did what I had to do for the sake of this firm. And make no mistake, it was what Harvey would want.”

Mike shakes his head, “Well, I’m sick of everyone acting like they _know_ what he wants!”

“Excuse me?” Jessica raises her eyebrows and leans forward, authority only slightly masking an underlying pain. “I knew Harvey for fifteen years before you fumbled into the wrong room at the Chilton like something out of _Serendipity_. I don’t claim to know him better than you, but do I know him _as well?_ You’re damn right I do. So this isn’t a technicality, Mike. This isn’t me trying to tie up a loose end. This is me trying to respect his wishes, which is what you should’ve done in the first place.”

Mike falls quiet, eventually muttering, “I’m sorry.”

Jessica nods but doesn’t respond further.

“It’s just…” Mike’s voice is broken. “It’s been two weeks. That’s…not even a long time. How can I…after just two weeks?”

“That’s two weeks that he’s been gone, Mike,” she reminds him.

“I know, but…” Mike wipes a tear away from his eye, wincing when he accidentally skims the forming bruise on his temple. “I know I haven’t gone to see him, okay? I know that he’s there, but he isn’t. But knowing he isn’t completely gone…it makes it seem less real, you know? Like, I can pretend that I just have to wait a little longer and then everything will be back to normal. I can’t just…I can’t let him go, Jessica. How did you?”

“I didn’t,” she says honestly, giving him a small smile. She feels a wave of emotion hit her, the type she usually keeps deep inside at work where no one can see it, and though only a bit – her tough façade fractures. Her eyes well, just a little, voice trembles, barely, but enough that Mike notices. “I have to let him go every single day.”

 

***

 

It takes everything Mike has to get to the hospital the next day. He woke up to signs Donna left him that read ‘ _Eat’_ and led to the microwave, where she had made him food. It turned out that food did in fact make him feel somewhat more alive, and the energy allowed him to venture out of the apartment again. But he finds the hospital particularly offensive today. Every sound – the shuffling of files, the shouting of drug orders, the rolling of gurney wheels on the tile floor – grates on his nerves. The industrial cleaning agents go to his head and make him nauseous. The methodic mayhem is unsettling, and he escapes it by getting on the elevator as soon as the doors open. The burn unit is less chaotic, but significantly more depressing. There’s just less _life_ in general. The entire floor seems to be in a state of dismal slow motion, and he can hear the ominous beeps and hisses coming from numerous patient rooms.

Harvey’s room doesn’t sound any different.

Mike sits beside him where he’d slept restlessly the first night. He picks up Harvey’s hand and squeezes it, fleetingly expecting him to squeeze back. When he doesn’t, Mike’s stomach drops as if he was kicked in the gut by reality. He considers talking to him, but then quickly dismisses the thought. That would be crazy, right? Harvey can’t hear him.

He’s there for about an hour, just watching Harvey’s chest rise and fall, when a doctor walks in.

“Mr. Ross?”

Mike looks up at the voice and nods in confirmation. He recognizes the man – it isn’t the same one who revived Harvey that night, but it is the one who talked to him after he was stabilized. He’d told Mike about the severity of Harvey’s condition and informed him of the odds and – though Mike had already not had much hope – he’d effectively taken any shred of it away in an impressively polite, compassionate manner that had ended with Mike thanking him despite that he’d just been given the worst news of his life for the second time in one day.

“Dr. Nichols,” the man says. “I’m a staff neurologist here on the burn unit. I believe we met a couple of weeks ago?”

Mike nods again. He recalls their conversation word for word – he wishes he didn’t. And he knows there hasn’t been any change in Harvey’s condition, not from the way things look and not from what Jessica told him, but he can’t help but ask anyway. “Has there been a change?”

Dr. Nichols shakes his head, “I’m afraid not.” He raises a clipboard. “But, there are a couple other things I wanted to go over with you. You are next of kin, right?”

“Power of attorney,” Mike replies. It sounds so technical and he wants to say _fiancé_ instead _,_ but since that doesn’t exact him the same rights, he decides against it.

The man drags a chair from the wall, places it just across from Mike at the end of the bed and sits down.

“Can he feel pain?” Mike asks distantly, not quite looking up yet.

“No.”

 “What about sound? Can he hear me?”

Dr. Nichols shakes his head. “I’m afraid not.”

“My colleagues think I should have him taken off life support,” Mike says, throat tightening as he finally takes his eyes off of all the tubes and looks up. “What do you think?”

“I’m afraid all I can do is give you the facts,” Dr. Nichols says gently. “And try to help you reach a decision on your own.”

Mike sniffles, not concerned with his appearance. Noticing a band on the man’s right hand, he asks, “Are you married?”

 “I am.” Dr. Nichols smiles. “In fact, my wife works in the NICU downstairs.”

“Well, um,” Mike gulps, glancing over at Harvey and then back. “What would…what would you do? If it was her?”

“Given Mr. Specter’s initial wishes…”

Mike flinches, a pang of guilt hitting him again. He watches the doctor flipping through the papers on his clipboard.

“I honestly don’t know what I would do if I was in your position, and I hope I never have to be. I would say that choosing to let him go would be completely understandable. Neurologically, his prognosis is still very grim. But his burns are healing beyond my expectations, the skin grafts are a continual success, and he has no secondary infections. I’m afraid there’s really no clear answer here. You are his power of attorney. Whatever decision you come to will be the right one. I can tell you love him and I’m sure he knew it as well. Hopefully that gives you the peace you need in order to decide.”

Dr. Nichols lingers for a little bit, as if waiting to see if Mike has any more questions. Eventually, he gives him a supportive pat on the shoulder and heads for the door.

“Wait,” Mike calls softly, stopping him. “I’m sorry, I just…can I ask one more thing?”

“Sure.”

Mike nods, trying to think of the best way to phrase his question. He’s crying now, not hard, but he knows it’s pretty obvious with the way his eyes keep watering and his breath hitches. “Um, I know you said that…that he can’t feel any pain, but I mean, if I—if I…”

“If you opted to end treatment, would he suffer?”

Mike nods, grateful the doctor took pity on him and asked the question he couldn’t quite manage.

Dr. Nichols shakes his head, “The pain receptors in his brain are completely inactive according the scans.”

“So…what would happen then? I mean how would he…”

“We would turn off the machine that’s breathing for him. After a few minutes, his heart would stop.”

Mike frowns, “So wait, you’re saying…he would _suffocate?”_

“He wouldn’t feel it.”

“Yeah, but, you’re saying…you’re basically saying he couldn’t breathe for several minutes and then his heart would stop and—”

“Technically, yes, but he wouldn’t—he wouldn’t know it was happening.”

Mike turns toward Harvey, grabbing his hand again and holding it tight, shaking his head wildly. It makes sense, he knows, and anyone who had given any significant thought at all to it would understand the logistics of it. But Mike apparently hadn’t considered it in any seriousness. “Okay, well, I made my decision and I don’t give permission to take him off life support, so, if you need that in writing again just let me know.”

Dr. Nichols gives a sympathetic sigh, “No one is going to do anything you don’t agree to. Currently, the directive is that all efforts be made to keep him alive and to monitor for any and all signs of recovery, no matter how small. Trust that that is what we’re doing. Okay?”

Mike nods tearfully. He manages to look up and thank him. Dr. Nichols exits and Mike turns back to Harvey, still gripping his hand, and leans forward so his elbows rest on the bed next to him.

 

“I’m sorry,” he chokes. “I’m sorry, I know, I know you didn’t want this, but I couldn’t…I can’t give up, _I just fucking can’t._

And suddenly, the idea of letting Harvey go is more than just depressing or difficult – it’s terrifying and impossible. With a deep breath, Mike commits to his decision, burying any residual guilt somewhere deep inside.

 

***

 

Mike returns to the firm and tries his hardest to dive back into work, pretending not to be perpetually weighted down by the emptiness inside him. He doesn’t start conversations in the bullpen anymore, doesn’t greet anyone with morning platitudes in the break room, and the majority of the other associates ignore him out of either pity or sympathy – he isn’t quite sure which of the two it is, though he presumes a combination of both. He does, however, maintain his professionalism in the areas of his job that require it. He dutifully finishes briefs in record time and interviews clients without letting any signs of his own personal trauma seep to the surface.

Bryant Caldwell isn’t difficult to work with, much to Mike’s relief. He’s oddly soft-spoken for a lawyer, aside from specific instances involving courtroom drama or difficult client meetings when he has to – reluctantly, but effectively – raise his voice. And while there’s equal knowledge and application of the law in him as, say, Jessica or Louis or any other partner has, it seems to come with less of an uptight, commercial pretense. Which really just means that Caldwell is right just as often but doesn’t try half as hard. It’s either an impressive trait or simply that he’s cloaked vicious corporate greed with something that walks and talks with a soul. Whatever the case, Mike is relieved. Especially because when he shows up late three days in a row after being up all night in the hospital downing cafeteria coffee – Caldwell doesn’t say anything. When he occasionally zones out with a sullen look on his face – Caldwell still doesn’t say anything. In fact, his only reaction at all is a concerned raise of his eyebrow. It softens the initial blow of working without Harvey.

But life is still hazy for Mike; still feels oddly as if he’d been on a train that suddenly and inexplicably jumped tracks and he keeps trying and trying to get back on the right one, but the more days that pass without Harvey waking up – the further and further away Mike feels from where he’s supposed to be. Despite Caldwell’s leniency and Donna’s consistent welfare checks, the pain is still as real and as palpable as it was on day one. More often than not, Mike still wakes up in a cold sweat, hearing the sound of failing brakes…and smelling the pungent burn of rubber.

 

Three more weeks drag by, totaling five and a half since the accident, and things haven’t changed a whole lot. Mike has fallen into a semblance of routine – he tosses and turns in bed at home, or drifts off for a few hours in a chair at the hospital, then half-heartedly rushes to work, where he forces himself into legal-tunnel vision, a trick that enables him to get through each day without being entirely useless.

Quinn Heard, the man who’d hit Ray’s car that day, remains in the wind. He’d survived the accident unscathed enough to escape during the chaos, and NYPD has had a warrant out for felony leaving the scene, amidst other pending charges, ever since. Though the police seem to be two steps behind, Mike is too busy with work to light any fires under the investigation, and decidedly uninterested in getting hung up on what seems like a fruitless search, so he rarely brings up the topic. Instead, he keeps his anger pent up inside where it continues to fester dangerously under the ruse of letting go.

Donna, however, sees through the mask, but doesn’t want to press where it hurts. She tries to find other ways to get Mike to let her in; to figure out exactly how much worse he is _inside_ than he looks on the outside.

“You look a little better.” Her voice stops him just outside of Harvey’s – _Caldwell’s_ – office. “How are you feeling?”

Mike backtracks to her desk, his shoulders slumping. “The same, I guess. I don’t know.”

“You sleeping?”

He shrugs.

“You know, Mike, you don’t have to live at the hospital just because you didn’t go every single day the first two weeks. You aren’t supposed to compensate for feeling bad.”

“Then what _am_ I supposed to do?”

“You’re supposed to cut yourself some slack.”

 “But I put him there, Donna. I can’t just let him stay there alone and I—” Mike sighs, his voice gradually breaking as he continues. “I miss him, okay? All the time, it’s like this _constant_ …it doesn’t go away and even when I’m sitting _right_ there, right beside him, he can’t hear me, or see me, or…”

Donna reaches her hand up and clasps it over his.

“I can’t tell him how my day went,” Mike continues, taking a shaky breath that borders on sad laughter. “Well, I could, and I do, but I know he can’t hear me. And I can’t…I can’t ask him how he is or what he wants for dinner or what time we have court or where he left the remote. I can’t kiss him, because there are all these tubes in his mouth. I can’t sleep next to him. He doesn’t even know when I tell him I love him, Donna.”

He stops, sucking in a breath and trying hard to get a hold of himself before this turns into a full-fledged breakdown, something he’s been doing a decent job of preventing, at least at work. At home, it’s a different story – and also the reason for the sudden decrease in intact glassware – but at least no one is there to witness it.

“Mike…” Donna squeezes his hand gently, but there isn’t much left for her to say. Everything supportive that she can think of, anything anyone has said to her that has made her feel better at all, has already been said, and said more than once. Now it’s simply a matter of just being there.

Mike shakes his head, successfully blinks back tears, and swipes a dismissive hand through the air. “I’m fine, I’m good,” he tells her, though it comes out hurried and choked, like he’s trying to fool himself before his mind has a chance to realize what he’s saying.

Donna gives him a weak smile and then nods over his shoulder. Caldwell is approaching swiftly.

“Do you have the Winston files?”

Mike clears his throat, “Right here.”

Caldwell takes the files graciously, looking down as he walks into his office. Mike follows.

“Holy shit,” Caldwell mutters. “You found our smoking gun.”

“Right there on page eleven,” Mike nods, and then frowns. “What, you didn’t think I would?”

 “I didn’t think there was anything to find. God knows I went over these files seventeen times – last night alone. This is amazing work, Mike.”

Mike shrugs modestly, but inside he feels validated. Based on his discussion with Jessica, he knows his job is safe – at least as safe as it can theoretically be given his fraudulent status – but he wants to be certain that Caldwell still thinks he’s the best, because there just isn't enough emotional stability left that would make working exclusively under Louis even a remote possibility. Fortunately for Mike, his brain continues to impress.

 

***

 

It’s mid-April when Mike gets off the elevator with Caldwell to see Jessica watching a man at the tail end of finally disassembling Darby’s name from the wall. Mike stops short, and Caldwell does the same to keep from running into him with a full cup of coffee.

Jessica looks at Mike, without really looking at him, her arms folded like the paws of a lion at the mouth of a den. It’s a good look on her, really, Mike knows, very fitting, a little disconcerting, but her personality summed up in one pose nonetheless. He still can’t help but glance nervously to and from the wall.

After a few minutes, the man finishes the task, collects his tools, and leaves.

“You didn’t think I was going to take it down did you?”

Jessica still isn’t looking at Mike or Caldwell, her attention transfixed on the wall, but her message is clear.

Mike shakes his head anyway, following her gaze.  

PEARSON SPECTER CALDWELL

 “I wasn’t sure,” he admits.

Jessica gives him the slightest of smiles, almost of the reassuring kind – which Mike finds interesting and surprisingly effective, considering the only person he’s ever seen her reassure was Harvey – before turning on her heels and walking away.

“Are you okay?”

Caldwell’s voice snaps Mike from the beginnings of a trance.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he replies, which is almost funny, really, because it’s not a lie, and yet there are so, so many ways in which he is absolutely, positively the opposite of _okay._

And Caldwell isn’t really fooled by his answer either, at most just partially convinced. But he accepts it for the sake of Mike’s current attempt at grieving by faking it until he makes it, the latter that’s starting to seem like something of a possibility, at least now that the kid is eating.

Caldwell jerks his head toward the wall. “I’m up there in good company.”

Mike is still for several seconds and then nods slowly in agreement. It’s a relief, and yet he can’t help but feel like this might be less of an indicator of Harvey’s eventual return and more of a tribute to the permanence of him being gone.  It was there before, of course,  though it seemed only with the implication that it would come down. But now the firm is moving on – and Harvey isn’t. Which is probably why Mike gets that vibe, why it feels the way it feels –like a memorial. A funeral without the grave. Another thing to slap Mike in the face with every morning and scream – _Gone._

He’s grateful when Caldwell nudges his shoulder and pries him away with a gentle, “Mike. Come on.”

 

***

 

Caldwell is the first to mention Heard’s name in weeks. He uses it to get Mike out of his cubicle and into his office in about eighteen seconds flat.

There’s a TV in the corner, and every time Mike sees it, he makes the unintentional mental observation that it’s in the same place Harvey used to display his baseballs. It reminds Mike that he sometimes feels like he’s in a mock version of his own life, like he’s on a set and people keep moving the furniture, replacing the actors, and the only thing that’s stayed the same is him. For the most part, though, he’s adapted enough to make it on a day-to-day basis, because as strange and as foreign as the changes are – they’re equally real. So, willing away the thoughts – of how the things Harvey had in this place are now gone – he follows Caldwell closer to the television and quickly reads the scrolling text at the bottom.

_Elusive hit and run suspect in custody_

Mike glances at Caldwell, eyes wide, and then back to the TV. The news anchor’s voice is matter-of-fact.

_Police have arrested the man they say is responsible for a hit-and-run collision last month that critically wounded two men. Quinn Heard, thirty-three, allegedly ran a red light before slamming into a town car in the intersection of 54 th and Sutton, on February 19th._

When a picture of the mangled car appears on the screen, and then jumps to a mugshot, Mike tenses. He feels hot, uncomfortable, nervous – like he’s been injected with a vial of liquid stress, all in the span of about ten seconds. It only gets worse after that.

_Heard was observed fleeing the scene on a traffic surveillance camera, but was gone by the time police and emergency personnel arrived. The driver of the town car sustained moderate injuries, and was taken to a local hospital where he spent four days in an intensive care unit before being release. The passenger, a prominent New York attorney, sustained third-degree burns and a severe brain injury. He remains on life support at an area hospital. Quinn Heard is currently charged with felony leaving the scene of an accident. Police say they expect more charges to be filed by Monday._

Mike opens his mouth but no sound comes out. A familiar wave of dizziness hits him, and all he can think is _not again,_ before he’s staggering to the side, instinctively reaching out for something to hold onto. He feels a hand on his shoulder, Caldwell’s voice, and Mike knows he’s standing right there, but the words are distant; hardly even registering in Mike’s ears at all.

 “Mike? Mike are you oka— _Donna!”_

 

***

 

When Mike comes to, it takes him almost a full minute – a definite personal record – to orient himself with his surroundings. Even the basics of location, time, day, and month elude him. He looks around. _Couch. Harvey’s office._

No. _Caldwell’s_ office. _Harvey’s not here. Harvey’s in a coma. You’re alone._

Every time he passes out, or simply goes to sleep and wakes up, is another time he’s cruelly reacquainted with the status quo. The only upside is that the more times he has to do it, the more efficient he becomes. And after an excruciating minute or two, he’s back to dealing with the present the best he can.

Footsteps in the doorway make him look up.

“Hey,” Caldwell greets, looking concerned. He hands him a glass of water.

“Hey,” Mike replies, glancing at him briefly but then looking past him beyond the door. He sees Donna and Jessica talking animatedly with one another, and catches a few sentences.

“I really think he should see someone, Jessica. He talks to me but…he doesn’t really listen. Maybe you can get through to him.”

Mike looks down to avoid eye contact when he notices Jessica turn in his direction. He continues to strain his ears.

“I don’t think I’m his biggest fan right now,” she’s says. “Kid won’t even look at me.”

It’s a little true – Mike does avoid Jessica whenever possible, but not necessarily because he’s angry over her suggestion that he consider taking Harvey off of life support. It’s more related to the fact that as resolute as he is in his choice now, some days he still feels guilty for it, and she’s a reminder that he was weak – unable and unwilling to go through with a decision that everyone else in Harvey’s life seems to be unanimous on.

After that, their voices fall to a hushed whisper and then eventually fade out altogether. Mike can’t hear them anymore, especially not with the faint ringing in his ears, so he centers his attention back on Caldwell, who has taken a seat across from him.

“You okay?” he asks. “Second time in a few weeks, Mike. I think we’re all a little worried about you.”

Mike doesn’t want to make a big deal of it, but the truth is that he’s finally scared. Supposedly, he’s been doing everything right. He’s been eating, at least once a day. Hell, Donna comes over several times a week to make sure of it. He sleeps roughly four hours a night, but that’s three and half more than he was getting a month ago. And yet his body still seems to be failing him, as if it’s directly linked to the state of his emotional health.

Submitting to the potential for shame, he admits, croakily, “I don’t know…I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

Caldwell sighs, because this isn’t the law or any other area that he has any expertise in and frankly, he feels more than a little helpless. All he can do is squeeze Mike’s shoulder and tell him to hang out for the remainder of the day and rest.

Mike does, but his sleep is persistently interrupted with harrowing fears of fainting again, and even riddled with the idea that Jessica and Donna might be plotting some type of intervention. He doesn’t agree that he’d be worth the trouble, but he wouldn’t put it past Donna’s bleeding heart to think of it or Jessica’s sly orchestration ability to put it in motion.

So for the rest of the afternoon and evening, he shudders in and out of a light sleep, various unpleasant dreams robbing it of any benefit whatsoever.

By the time he goes home, turns on the TV – for white noise, to tone down the lonely silence – and gets into bed, he doesn’t really feel any better. He has a brief moment, just before falling asleep, where he wonders if this is the best it’s going to get – if this strange lull in time that he hardly can categorize as existing - let alone living - of eating only enough to sustain, of spending hollow nights in a king size bed by himself, or even more hollow ones dozing off in a chair in a burn unit, and passing out bi-monthly at work – is going to become his life. He’s waiting to turn the page and find the twist: that this is all a complete misunderstanding; a horrible, ill-executed joke that someone started and then walked away before shouting _just kidding!_ But it doesn’t come. No one jumps out from behind the scenes to tell Mike it isn’t real. And no one’s life is derailing because of it except for his own.

 

***

 

Mike only has to wait fifteen minutes outside the D.A.’s office before Cameron Dennis emerges. What’s weird about it isn’t that their relationship is particularly negative – it’s that they don’t really even have one at all. The majority of their interactions took place with Harvey present and doing most of the talking, and it was always about cases that Mike, while he wanted to win, had no personal stake in. This particular visit is a complete deviation from that.

He half expects Cameron to either ignore him or acknowledge him in an off-hand, disinterested way like he’s done in the past. But when he comes to a stop immediately, facing going staid, Mike realizes that there’s no way he doesn’t know about the accident, and Mike’s presence, in that case, might not seem like the best sign.

“No, it’s not…” Mike puts up his hand, almost in apology. “It’s not that, he’s…” he pauses. What’s the word he’s looking for? Harvey’s far from fine, but he’s not quite considered dead, so... “…uh, he’s the same.”

Cameron sighs. “I was there the other day. Keep hoping to see some kind of change but…nothing.”

Mike raises an eyebrow. “You went to see Harvey?”

“Yeah,” Cameron frowns at the surprise in Mike’s tone. “A few times. Hard to get there during visiting hours with my schedule, though. Why?”

“Nothing,” Mike shakes his head. “Uh, listen, I actually didn’t come here about Harvey…”

“Oh?”

“Well, it kind of is. Listen, you know what happened, right? With the accident?”

Cameron shrugs. “Yeah, of course. And I’m glad they caught that bastard. Hope they throw the book at him.”

Mike takes a sharp breath, “That’s why I’m here, actually,” he admits.  “I want you to take the case. I want you to prosecute him.”

“Okay,” Cameron shakes his head. “Listen, kid, I wanna help, but I’m a state D.A. Believe it or not, I can’t actually pick and choose what cases I get.”

“But you know people, you could make it happen,” Mike persisted, a little desperate. “Please. If someone else gets this case, he’ll get a slap on the wrist. Maybe even probation. And then he’ll be free to walk around, and run some more lights, and breathe, and live – while my fiancé lays in a _hospital bed_ having burns debrided every three hours and breathing through fucking a tube.”

Mike’s anger isn’t personal – except maybe toward Quinn Heard – but it effectively makes his point. Cameron looks more than a little swayed.

“Fiancé?”

“Yeah,” Mike says, absently rubbing his thumb over the ring on his ringer. He pauses, gauging Cameron’s reaction. “You don’t look surprised.”

“Was anyone?” Cameron scoffs. “You and Harvey? Come on.”

Mike looks down and truly smiles for the first time in about two months.

“Alright, listen. I’ll do my best,” Cameron sighs, and then, noticing the flash of hope in Mike’s eyes, adds, “No guarantees.”

 

***

 

“Hey, Bryant, can I ask you something?”

Mike is sitting in Caldwell’s office, trying to focus on the case, but it’s past eight o’clock and his mind shut off well before seven. It didn’t used to – used to be capable of working well into the night with almost as much accuracy as it did during the day. But the events of the last couple months have hindered that ability and he knows from experience that when this happens he’s at great risk for being quickly met with and overwhelmed by an onslaught of flashbacks. All he can think to do is try to find distractions.

“Sure,” Caldwell replies, smiling. “Can’t promise I’ll answer it though.”

Mike scoffs and then asks, genuinely curious. “Why’d you move here? I mean, isn’t it really nice down there…like, the weather and stuff?”

Caldwell laughs, “It was. But uh, I had family up here that needed me,” his face goes a little stoic. “My mother passed away and I thought I should be closer to my dad…”

“Oh,” Mike looks down. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Caldwell sits back. “That’s life, right?”

“Right.”

They’re quiet for a few minutes, and then Mike speaks up again. “So, did you like your old firm?”

“Loved it,” Caldwell tells him. “But I like it here too.” He gives Mike a pointed look. “I definitely didn’t have anyone as smart working with me there.”

Mike smiles, though he thinks that his brilliance is currently very sub-par if he can’t even work until 8:30 without struggling to find an avenue of conversation that will lead any place except to a hospital. It’s not a promising sign as far as his intelligence goes, and if he were Caldwell he thinks he might be starting to seek out a replacement associate in the event Mike continues to deteriorate – or finally cracks up for good. But nevertheless, Caldwell seems comfortable if not pleased with him and Mike finds that being wanted isn’t a terrible thing.

“What do you say we call it a night?” Caldwell’s voice breaks in, and Mike looks up to see him standing from his desk and pulling on his jacket.

Mike is tempted to jump up and second this plan since he doesn’t see himself becoming productive any time soon. But his work is dreadfully unfinished. He looks up regretfully. “I only got to page thirty-eight.”

“Finish it in the morning,” Caldwell says, raising a dismissive hand. “Come on, I’m buying us drinks.”

“Really?” Mike scrambles to organize his paperwork and get it into his bag before his conscience becomes too annoyed with the idea of leaving work waiting until tomorrow. But these days there is only so much he can do.

“Really,” Caldwell confirms, but he turns around and points a finger. “But only if you also order food. Deal?”

Mike doesn’t have much of an appetite, as usual, but he nods anyway – anything to get out of the building, anything to go anywhere besides home to a disturbingly empty apartment. “Deal.”

 

***

 

Mike’s trying his hardest to finish his food, eyeing the drink menu longingly. It’s almost like a child being told to eat their vegetables under the threat of not getting dessert. He’s about to ask if finishing nearly half his plate is enough, since it’s more than he’s eaten in one sitting in weeks, but his cell phone goes off before he has the chance.

It’s Cameron Dennis.

“I got the case,” is all he says at first, voice gruff and businesslike as always. And then, “I don’t have a hearing yet because the scumbag fired his lawyer, but when I do I’ll call you.”

“Okay.” Mike lets out a long sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Cameron says. “And decide if settling is something you’ll consider, because inevitably I’m going to be asked to make a deal with this guy. I need to know if you’ll want me to do that when it happens.”

Mike is silent for a second, his mind struggling to keep up with the news.

“Mike? Help me out.”

“No,” Mike finally answers. “No, we’re going to trial.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Cameron says. “I’ll keep in touch.”

Mike is about to hang up when a renewed twinge of anger causes him to ask, “Where’s he being held?”

Cameron is slow to respond, clearly reluctant to give him any more bad news. It’s interesting, Mike decides, that people who never particularly liked him – didn’t necessarily _dislike_ him, either, but definitely put up with him strictly because he and Harvey were a package deal – were suddenly making noticeable efforts to keep from hurting him. This included Cameron and Jessica and just about any mutual acquaintances of Harvey’s. It’s like they might not have originally thought much of Mike himself – young genius with a sketchy backstory – but they intended to look out for him in an effort to do right by Harvey. Mike doesn’t t know if he should be really insulted or…really grateful. Regardless, he waits out the agonizing several seconds until Cameron finally sighs heavily on the other end of the line.

“He’s not being held anywhere, kid,” he tells him, gently, but with the slight disappointment of someone who thinks Mike should definitely have figured that out already. He’s a lawyer after all (as far as Cameron knows, anyway). “He’s out on bail.”

Mike opens his mouth but says nothing.

 “Do not look for him and let me handle it,” Cameron is saying, and it’s definitely some sort of plea or warning, but whatever it is, it doesn't stick. All Mike hears is, “I gotta go, kid, I’ll keep you updated.”

The call ends and Mike stares blankly ahead, all sounds in the restaurant fading into the background. Caldwell holds off long enough before asking him any questions to slide him his jack and coke. Mike picks it up gratefully, tips it back, and downs the contents in two swallows.

*

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for the encouragement! I promise I know where this is going 
> 
> (there is a brief description of violence in this chapter...i don't think it's too bad, but here is a warning just in case)

 

*

The offices of Wallace, Blake, and Schwartz is only like Pearson Specter Caldwell in the sense that upon walking inside, Mike can immediately tell he is surrounded by lawyers. It’s a certain vibe they give off and he can understand why people find it unsettling – someone with far too much knowledge of the law and every resource available to skirt it – but he can’t be too opposed to the vibe, considering he’s one of them. Or at least, parading around as very, very convincing and effective version of one. But aside from that, it’s night and day. Less organized, less glorified, more hurried and overwhelmed and practical – definitely not a corporate firm by any sense of the word.

The people he immediately sizes up as associates seem less micromanaged and all their suits fit a little less…well, just a little less. International law is clearly less about image and more about action. _Why can you be about both?_ He finds himself wondering, before realizing Harvey has brainwashed him in some of the most ridiculous, superficial ways.

 He finds a receptionist and approaches with a momentary thought to reconsider and leave.

“I’m looking for Prescott Blake,” he announces, with a fake but persuasive smile.

The woman behind the desk looks mildly suspicious, but hits the button on a modern intercom anyway.

“Someone here to see you,” she says into it, and when a male voice on the other end asks who, she looks up. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Mike Ross.”

She repeats his name into the microphone.

 _“I don’t think I know who that is, Linda,”_ comes a slightly-annoyed voice.

Mike considers again that this might be a stupid idea – he’s had a lot of those in his life, actually – but he decides to try one more time before giving up.

“Harvey Specter sent me?” he says, and it comes out much more like a question than he intends. It’s also not exactly the whole truth, but it’ll have to do for now.

There’s a silence on the other end of the speaker when the woman relays the information. And then, finally, a deadpanned, _“Send him back.”_

 

Mike’s used to being sized up when he meets someone new, especially in a suspicious kind of way, like they’re not buying the whole lawyer thing and maybe it’s because he looks so young or maybe it’s his skinny ties or maybe he has FRAUD scrawled across his forehead – who knows. Whatever it is, he’s learned to brush it off and then subsequently floor the person with his brilliance, eliminating any prior doubts they had about his competence.

But Prescott Blake isn’t just another client, or even just another lawyer, and Mike isn’t here to convince him to do anything like testify or sign a dotted line. So when the man gives him a thorough once-over before offering him a seat, it’s a little harder to shake. Not necessarily awkward, but Mike does feel like he’s on the spot. Which is ridiculous, he thinks, since he’s the one who brought himself here in the first place. But again with the stupid ideas.

Fortunately, Blake sits down at his desk and seems a little more approachable, so Mike exhales.

The office isn’t that big, but it’s well lit, and the walls are covered in pictures and what look like awards or achievements, many of which are typed in foreign languages. The picture frames document a solid decade of travels. Mike snapshots the room in seconds and realizes instantly that while Harvey doesn’t share this sort of sentimentality, Blake definitely shares Harvey’s narcissism. Which isn’t a negative observation – Mike should know, after all, he lived with Harvey’s for three years – and it’s certainly only one trait among a thousand other good ones. For example, he can already tell Blake is a humanitarian, particularly by all of the pro-bono cases on the desk in front of him. But damn, Mike thinks, almost amused, the narcissism might be repressed but there’s definitely no conscious effort made to hide it. He’s not sure what it says about him that this bit of information is more comforting and familiar than it is off-putting – and he decides not to read into that right now.

He asks Blake if he’s aware that Harvey is in the hospital, and Blake nods sullenly, telling him that he’d seen the accident covered on the news. When he mentions Quinn Heard’s name, Mike feels his own muscles stiffen. He has to make a conscious effort to relax, to keep himself cool and collected instead of hostile.

“What exactly did Harvey send you here for?” Blake eventually asks, after the topic of the accident becomes too uncomfortable for either of them. There’s a light smirk on his face, which Mike finds relief in, because it means that Blake is curious and not necessarily annoyed or inconvenienced.

“I…” Mike isn’t a hundred percent sure how to explain it. He figures identifying himself with more than his name and ‘friend’ might be a good start. “I’m his – I mean I was – his associate. At Pearson…well, Pearson Specter Caldwell, actually.”

Blake smiles, “I know.”

“You do?”

“I recognize your name now,” he explains, with a shrug. “I ran into Harvey outside of court about a year ago, we talked for a couple minutes, said he was waiting for his associate. I left before you came out.”

Mike nods. “Oh.”

There’s a beat of silence in which Mike struggles with what to say next, until he finally decides to just be honest for a change. Lying never did work out too well.

“Um, well, actually,” he starts. “Harvey wanted me to go to school…er, finish school…I mean, go back to school, like…”

This is emphatically _not_ how honest Mike wants to be.

Blake raises an eyebrow, “Aren’t you already a big Harvard grad like the rest of us? Was it not elite enough?”

Mike almost chokes on his own saliva. “No. I mean yes. I mean I am. A Harvard grad. I just… it’s a long story. Anyway, he said you might be able to help me, with the admissions stuff, because I haven’t actually applied to college for like, ten years, and I know you were a T.A. at Harvard…”

Blake interrupts, “But…?”

“Uh, what?”

“You don’t look like a twenty-seven year old who just decided to become a career student, so I’m gonna go out on a limb and say you didn’t actually come here for my college expertise.”

“I…” Mike frowns, a little impressed and a little confused. “I didn’t…how do you know how old I am?”

Blake laughs – he actually laughs. “Call it an educated guess, Mike.”

“Okay,” Mike sighs. “I didn’t come here for help. I wanted to meet you.”

“Okay...”

“The truth is I didn’t even know who you were until like, a month ago. I mean, I knew _about_ you but I didn’t know who you were. After the accident I found your business card and I…I guess I thought that I knew everything about Harvey but I don’t, not everything. And I can’t talk to him anymore and I thought…I don’t know. I just wanted to know what he was like back then. I wanted to know why you two didn’t work out.”

Blake gives him a small, reminiscent smile and shrugs. “I was young. He was even younger.”

“He told me it was because he was at the D.A.’s office and you were travelling a lot.”

“That too,” Blake agrees. “We didn’t really want the same things and our areas of law were literally night and day. So we just drifted.” He stops and eyes Mike knowingly. “But I always felt like he was waiting for someone else.”

Mike blinks. “Who?”

Nodding once towards Mike’s hand, Blake says softly, “I’m assuming you.”

Mike looks down at his hand, resting on the arm of the chair, and the light bouncing off the ring on his finger. “This, uh,” he shrugs, feeling transparent. “This could be from anyone.”

Blake raises an eyebrow. “Is it?”

Mike shakes his head.

After a couple minutes, he looks up, voice sad, “Do you miss him?”

“It’s hard not to miss someone like Harvey,” Blake responds. “Isn’t it?”

 

On his way out, Mike stops at the sound of Blake’s voice.

“If you ever do decide...to go _back_ to school…I recommend Fordham. It’s not Ivy League, but…well, you’ve had your share of the Ivy League, right?”

Mike pauses and then, “…Right.”

“I could expedite the process for you, get you in on time for the fall semester. If you wanted, of course. You have my number. Just let me know.”

 

*

 

 

Mike wakes up in the usual way on Saturday, with his knees tucked under him on a chair, chest and face pressed into the side of a hospital bed, one arm underneath his neck, the other resting on top of Harvey’s stomach. It’s not the most comfortable position in the world, but it’s not the worst, either, and he’s grown used to it. Now instead of staying up all night, he rambles on quietly to Harvey’s figure about work and cases and clients, Caldwell and Quinn Heard and Cameron Dennis, and then drifts off in a loyal heap at his side by midnight. The increase in hours of sleep from about three or four to nearly seven is invaluable for his need to be able to function, but Mike finds that it doesn’t make any difference in how he feels emotionally. In fact, this particular night he makes it past 9am before the usual hospital chaos outside the door startles him awake, but his chest aches anyway, empty as always. And he’s still alone in the room but for a shell of the person who looks lot like Harvey – but doesn’t speak or move or breathe on his own. Doesn’t  even smell like him anymore, Mike has discovered, scent of cologne or deodorant or aftershave all stripped away by months in a sterile hospital setting and replaced with, at best, an unidentifiable soap, and at worst, nothing at all.

He looks vulnerable in a way that Mike never thought was even possible. He’s Harvey Specter, after all. In fact, sometimes Mike thinks he’d been under the impression that Harvey was immortal, in the way a child a thinks that their parent can’t ever die or that anyone older and stronger and smarter than them is immune to the random horrors of life that claim everyone else. Of course, Mike already lost his parents, so in that regard, he isn’t quite as naïve. But he’d still been convinced to some degree that Harvey couldn’t go out like this. He’d been afraid, of course, of losing him to time or distance or irreconcilable differences, even. But he definitely thought Harvey couldn’t be leveled by something as mundane as a fucking car accident, that it would take something much, much greater to hurt him this badly. This is the sort of thing that would happen to _Mike_ , not Harvey. Harvey shouldn’t be this unlucky; doesn’t have a track record of misfortune dating back to the fifth grade.

But, sighing, Mike realizes that this _did_ happen to him. In fact, maybe it happened to him even more than it happened to Harvey. If he’d been the one in the car instead, he’d also be the one asleep, peaceful – according to the doctors and the brain scans – waiting silently but with no concept of time, for someone to let him go, to let him fade away, to put an end to all of the round-the-clock care, the wound debridement, the dressing changes, the trach-tube cleaning. But Mike is the one sitting up, awake, agonizingly aware of the passing of time and entirely unable to do anything except hurt – to be in the sort of pain that no one can give him morphine for, and all he’s forced to do, day in and day out, is feel it.

 _“I couldn’t believe it, I had to go see for myself,”_ Louis had said to him, about three days after Mike made the plunge back into work. He’d stood in front of his cubicle, more unassuming than usual but still speaking entirely too much about a topic that for Mike felt a lot like a seriously unhealed wound. Mike had looked up, too tired to ask to be spared. Louis was genuinely not trying to be a dick, but he just didn’t have the capacity to recognize an _I don’t want to talk about it_ expression even when it was staring right back at him. “ _It’s like when you clean out your apartment, you know, because you’re moving, and on the outside, it’s still totally your apartment, but inside… empty. Nobody home.”_

Mike cringed at that, hoping Louis had exhausted his bizarre analogies, but of course, he hadn’t.

_“He’s like Superman, neutralized.”_

Caldwell had manifested at the end of the bullpen shortly thereafter, gave a sharp nod, and Louis fled.

It’s evident now that he was right, that Harvey does look like Superman stripped of his power, stripped of even just fundamental abilities, not necessarily humanized but _dehumanized;_ reliant on a dozen twenty-somethings in cheap scrubs for basic life-sustaining care when he’d never relied on anyone for much less in his entire adult life _._   This is definitely no way to live – or exist – whether Harvey’s aware of it or not, and Mike knows this, can’t _stop_ knowing it, but there’s still no way that he can let go. Maybe it’s a selfish decision, or maybe it’s selfless, or maybe it doesn’t even matter at all, but whatever it is, it’s definitive. Mike sometimes even feels like he’s guarding what’s left of Harvey by staying with him on the nights that he does, and once in a while when he’s away he gets hit with anxiety, with an irrational fear that someone might mix up Harvey’s chart with someone whose family has given the all-clear to turn off the machines. When that happens, either Donna talks him down, or Mike drops what he’s doing – sometimes literally – and rushes to hospital, only to find, of course, that Harvey is still reliably attached to various tubes and just as artificially alive as he was the last time Mike saw him.

The relief Mike has in those moments – that the only hope he has is based on something hopeless – is proof of how grim the situation really is.

He stands up and straightens his shirt. Normally, on a Saturday, he doesn’t have anywhere to be. Sometimes Caldwell invites him to lunch or to the gym, but Mike usually declines because he can’t tell for sure if it’s a pity offer or not, and he doesn’t think his own company would be that appealing. Once in a while he goes to the office because of his increasing habit of not quite finishing all of Friday’s work. Today happens to be one of those times, and he knows there’s a stack of briefs on Harvey’s – _Caldwell’s_ – desk, waiting for him.

“I’ll come back,” he whispers, leaning down and pressing his face against Harvey’s neck. He runs his fingers through his hair, which has grown a little longer and sits tousled and soft and unstyled.

On the way out, hands in his pockets, Mike nearly runs into Jessica coming off the elevator in other direction with two cups of coffee in her hands. She passes him one, which he accepts wordlessly, giving her a small nod of thanks.

He steps on the elevator and watches her click down the hallway toward Harvey’s room. His hair prickles. He’s sick of coming here. He’s sick of waiting for something that everyone keeps telling him will never happen. He’s sick of fleeting, split-seconds of blissful ignorance when he forgets the full gravity of what’s happened, and he’s sick of the instances when reality crashes back down around him.

The feeling of dread inside his body is so disproportionate to the feeling of anything else that it’s hard to believe it doesn’t force the elevator into a freefall. It descends as it should, though, each beep of the every floor punctuating his varying grief, which definitely doesn’t seem to be following any sort of Kübler-Ross pattern, hitting him in constant, unrelenting, overlapping waves instead of in stages.

By the time he gets out and into the questionable New York air, Mike can hardly breathe. Dread still consumes him, but it’s been shoved deep into his stomach to make room for something else, something stronger – more anger than he’s ever felt in his whole life.

 

*

 

Mike has no idea how much he’s had to drink, how long he’s been at this bar, or even how he got here. What he does know is that the bartender took his phone about ten minutes ago and when he finally hands it back, he looks at Mike’s bruised knuckles with both concern and suspicion before sighing and going back to wiping down the counter.

There’s a buzzing in Mike’s head, and it could be from the liquor – straight tequila, although he can’t taste much anymore – or it could be from exhaustion, or grief, or fear, or the culmination of all of those things peaking right here in this bar into a full-blown nervous break. On the outside, he just stares down at his empty glasses with glazed eyes, but inside, the war is real, and it’s ruthless.

He turns his hands over, almost in slow-motion, barely recognizing the way they’re bruised, swollen, and caked with dried blood. Even in his drunken state, he can still feel the way they throb down to the bone, same as his toes, same as his head, same as his conscience.

Quinn Heard had looked the same as his mugshot photo when Mike found him, locking up his store earlier that night. It was a minor altercation at first.

“Who the hell are you?”

“I’m a friend of the guy who’s gonna put you away for fifteen years.” Mike felt oddly calm in the face of a man who was almost twice his size. “But I think the better question is why did you skip out on your court date?’

Heard looked annoyed, “Man, I got a business to run.”

He tucked keys into his pocket and proceeded to walk away.  And that’s where it should have ended. Should have.

“Hey, were you drinking?”

Heard spun around at the question. “What?”

“The day you ran the light,” Mike explained. “How much did you have to drink?”

“I know you’re a lawyer, and I don’t have to talk to you.”

“Just answer the fucking question!” Mike shouted.

“I wasn’t drunk!” Heard finally answered, throwing up his hands. “It was three in the fucking afternoon. You happy?”

Mike could feel his muscles tensing. “If you were so sober, why’d you leave? If it was an accident, why not stay and tell the truth? Why not try to _help?”_

“I said I wasn’t drunk,” Heard gave him a pointed look that Mike could only make out thanks to the street lamp casting light on their faces. “I _didn’t_ say it was an accident.”

In that moment, Mike felt his blood going cold, revelation like lead hitting him at once, bile creeping into his throat as his mind went into overdrive, instantly becoming a photographic encyclopedia of February’s events, cases, clients, names, meetings, court dates, evidence. It all sailed before his vision in rapid succession, a jumble of what he’d thought had been just another case, just another client, just another dispute between a massive infrastructure company and an angry underdog that a fast-approaching court date had threatened to decide their respective fates. With Harvey Specter on the former’s side, the opponent hadn’t stood a chance.

It was almost like Heard could see the realization washing over Mike’s face.

“You’re probably more familiar with my father’s company,” he said bitterly. “Lindin Industries?”

Mike opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“Yeah, you know, the one he built from the ground up, the one Harvey Specter wanted to drain of all of its resources and hand-feed to—”

“Valito Incorporated,” Mike interrupted, nearly breathless. How the fuck had he missed this?

Heard looked ready to start walking away again, but reconsidered, adding, “Hey, how did that go, by the way? The Valito hearing?”

Mike looked up, eyes wide, but his voice was hardly a whisper, like he was talking more to himself than to Heard, trying to convince himself that it was all really happening. “We…lost. We…we lost.”

The Valito CEO had never signed the contract and no one could get up to speed on the facts fast enough to make a compelling case in court. Mike had been so distraught that work or court of any kind had been entirely out of the question. Louis had done his best to take Harvey’s place at the hearing on Monday, but in the end, a serious time crunch, lack of preparation, and Pearson Darby Specter still reeling from the accident – Valito Inc. had lost, and badly.

“You…” Mike shook his head in disbelief. Everything was adding up; all falling into place with a sick, ominous twist. “You did it…on _purpose?”_

Heard gave him a blank stare and then turned to leave again.

“You son of bitch!” Mike called out.

Heard did throw the first punch, if that was any consolation, – he spun around, balled-up fist landing squarely on Mike’s jaw, sending him stumbling backward. In what could have definitely, absolutely passed as self-defense, Mike punched him back just as hard, if not a little harder, causing Heard to lose his balance and cradle a bloody nose with his hand as he tripped. And then, once again, Heard gave him a cold stare before turning around to walk away.

And that, well, that was another instance where it could have stopped – but didn’t. Another moment where it could have all come to a halt, right there on that sidewalk, before it ever escalated into anything greater than a minor, understandable, and mostly-verbal confrontation. But the problem was that Mike couldn’t let go. All he could see in his head was Harvey – first in the car, face pressed lifelessly against a window as firefighters had rushed to cut him out in a frenzied race against flames and time, and then in the hospital, immobile, silent, body ravaged by burns and blunt force trauma. And after that, the only thing Mike saw at all…was red.

It took three blows to get Heard onto the ground, which wasn’t that many, considering. He was taller and heavier, but as it turned out, much less coordinated. And since he’d been walking away, Mike had the element of surprise.

The adrenaline hit him like someone opened the throttle in a V8 – all of Mike’s anger was coming out, first in rapid, merciless punches and then brutal, repetitive kicks to Heard’s stomach, as fast and as hard he possibly could. Again and again and again, ignoring – or maybe not even hearing – the gasps and shouts of pain and surrender coming from the man on the ground.

Up until now, Mike wasn’t much of a fighter. Still wasn’t, actually, probably only had the upper hand because he’d managed to get Heard wounded and under him, all a stroke of luck or logistics that happened to play out in his favor. In the few fights he’d ever been involved in, he never came out on the other side looking like he’d won. But then again, he’d never felt so much like a victim before, either. Not since he was eleven years old, of course, but there hadn’t been many ways to retaliate at that age. Now, after holding in that feeling – that helpless, victimized, cornered, _pissed-the-fuck-off_ feeling – in for so many years, only to have it be viciously refueled by Harvey’s accident (which had apparently not been an accident at all), Mike was finally caving to the pressure. More aptly – exploding from it. 

It wasn’t just vengeance, because Mike wasn’t thinking clearly enough to believe he was doling out any sort of street justice, or even that what he was doing would somehow even the score. If Harvey would wake up, then maybe, _maybe,_ there would be justice. But then that just knocked over the dominos that led to him wanting his parents back again, which as always, spiraled into the reality that it was Pandora’s Box; a sixteen-year-long internal fight with no one but himself and no way to ever undo the damage.

Beating Quinn Heard, though it solved no problems at all and created a hundred new ones in Mike’s life, did temporarily help him cope. He hated the man so intensely, the only way he could even demonstrate that sort of contempt was to continue to kick him in the stomach, ribs, and face repeatedly, even long after Heard had curled into the fetal position. Mike was projecting everyone else he hated onto him – everyone else he associated with everything bad that had ever happened; people responsible for leaving him an orphan, anyone with _any_ accountability whatsoever in taking away the only three people in the world who’d ever cared about him. So Heard had multiple identities that night, and Mike was using the assault to punish every single one of them – Fenton. Rinaldi. Lindin Industries. The entire Valito case, just for ever existing. God, for probably not existing. And maybe, even himself. In moments of clarity, long before this impulsive, messy retribution, Mike had blamed himself for everything that had happened, because he couldn’t ever quite come to grips with the idea that so many horrible things could actually happen to him if he was really a good person.

He came down from his rage-induced attack, but it took a while. It took the pain searing up his toes and into his shin, it took the sound of cracking ribs, and the sight of a _lot_ of blood to do it. Even then, it was a slow process. He didn’t just stop all at once. He kicked Heard in the face a few more times, the crunch of teeth and bone suddenly palpable even under the sole of his shoe. More and more seconds started to lapse between each impact, and finally, confused and dazed, Mike stopped, out of breath, just staring down, the gravity of the situation not even hitting him for several moments.

There was no one else on the street as far as he could see, and when it hit him that Heard wasn’t moving, Mike looked around wildly one more time – and then bolted.

The bar was incidental, probably on his way home or wherever it was he was heading, Mike still isn’t sure. He just knows he ended up here, opened a massive tab, and now he’s seeing everything in threes. When Caldwell walks in, there are three of him as well, and then two, and finally a very unreliable single version of him as Mike concentrates hard to focus his vision.

He laughs dryly, “What are you doing here?”

This wasn’t a part of town that would be typically alluring to high-end, corporate, managing-partner attorneys, and even though Mike had fallen into Harvey’s company, he always did feel more at home in divey, hole-in-the-wall places like this where jeans and a t-shirt were all that was required to enter. Hell, they apparently didn’t even discriminate if said clothes were covered hem-to-shoe in blood.

“I’m here to get you,” Caldwell answers, looking at Mike’s bloody knuckles and then nodding toward the bartender, who is giving them the side-eye. “You’re lucky he used your phone to call me instead of the cops. Let’s go.”

He sounds a little pissed off – more pissed off than Mike has ever heard him in the nearly three months they’ve been working together – so he doesn’t hesitate to slide ungracefully off his barstool and follow him out.

“What are you doing?”

Mike fumbles pathetically with his phone. “I have to call him.”

“Who?” Caldwell asks, grabbing a fistful of Mike’s shirt to keep him from falling over.

“Cameron….” Mike hiccups and stumbles again. “Dennis.”

Caldwell shakes his head strongly and snatches the phone away. “No, you’re not calling the district attorney at 12:45 in the morning after you obviously did _precisely_ what he told you _not_ to.” He opens the passenger door of a car parked just off the curb. “Get in, Mike, you’re wasted.”

“I have to tell him what really _happened!”_ Mike shouts, but it all comes out as a slurred, drunken mess. He feels his stomach pang with dread as the evening’s events return to him in hazy but honest flashes. “Oh god. Oh god, I fucked up, Bryant, I fucked up.”

Mike collapses into the passenger seat with a nauseas groan. Caldwell starts the car with an irritated jerk of his hand that Mike picks up on even in his intoxicated state.

“Why’d you even come and get me,” Mike asks, wiping runaway saliva off his mouth. “If you were so pissed about it?”

Caldwell doesn’t answer at first, but eventually he sighs. “Guy calls me after midnight, from a seedy bar, tells me I’m the last number dialed by some kid who’s been throwing back tequila for two hours, has a black eye and blood on the back of his hands?” he takes his eyes off the road briefly to glance to his right. “I wasn’t pissed off, Mike. I was worried.”

Mike looks back at him for a minute, but he can’t concentrate for very long before a wave of dizziness hits him again. He sways toward the window and gulps. “I’m gonna to be sick,” he mumbles.

“Are you…are you going to puke?” Caldwell asks. “Do you need me to pull over?”

“No,” Mike shakes his head, willing his stomach to settle. “I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know, I might have…what if I…I might’ve killed him. He wasn’t moving and I…I just left," he pauses, scoffing bitterly before continuing. "I fucking left! I don’t even remember _, God,_ I don’t even know what I was doing, I didn’t mean to do it, I just wanted to talk to him, but he said, he said it wasn’t an accident, I mean he tried… _he tried…_ he let him _burn..."_

Mike rambles on helplessly. “I just, I snapped, Bryant, I just lost it, and then I couldn’t…I couldn’t _stop_ …but it’s like, it’s I was watching myself do it and I…”

He chokes on the tail end of his words, nausea flooding his system again before he finally motions frantically for Caldwell to pull over. With a frustrated cry, Mike shoves open the door, Caldwell’s hand reaching across the console to rest on his back as he throws up repeatedly.

*

In the morning, Mike doesn’t recognize his surroundings as either his spacious and very empty bed at home or as the makeshift one at Harvey’s side in the hospital. He hasn’t shaken off the covers in a fit of nightmare-induced sweats and he hasn’t been covered up with a stiff sheet by a sympathetic nurse either, so he figures he must be somewhere else entirely.

When Caldwell emerges from a door across the room, Mike gets his answer.

“Oh,” he moans into a couch cushion as his head pounds with pain. Even his eyes hurt. Then his discomfort and disorientation turns into panic. “Oh, god!” he sits up, a little too quickly, raising a hand to shield himself from the light flooding in through a window. “Oh, god, where’s my phone? What time is it? I have to—”

“Here,” Caldwell says, Mike’s phone appearing in his hand. “It’s 9:30. Have to what?”

Mike looks down at the screen at seventeen missed calls and eight new text messages. His heart beats twice as fast as the throbbing in his head. There was a time when he hoped for this, for an influx of calls and voicemails that he hoped against all odds would be telling him that Harvey was awake, that some kind of medical miracle had taken place and that he was _awake_ and everything was, for once in his God damn life, going to be okay.

But Mike knows almost immediately that his life never turns around that quickly, at least not for the better. He knows before he even listens to his messages that they’ll be a string of angry, disappointed lectures courtesy of Cameron Dennis, cursing and ranting about how reckless Mike is and how many problems he’s caused for him and how difficult, if not impossible, the case against Quinn Heard will be to prosecute now.

At first, Mike slumps back, relief washing over him like six hits off a joint Trevor used to get on the Lower East Side, because all of this means that he didn’t kill anyone in his brief but violent lapse in sanity. But then the other consequences of his actions begin to catch up to his lagging mind, and the possibility that he blew the entire case – eliminating the potential for any justice at all – is too much to deal with.

“Oh fuck,” he says, fumbling with his phone. “Fuck, I have to call him and—”

“I already talked to him,” Caldwell says. He sets a glass of water on the table, and two aspirin.

Mike looks at him suspiciously.

“You were out cold, and your phone started going off at three in the morning and kept up until about seven, which was when I decided to answer it.”

“You talked to Cameron Dennis?  What did you tell him?”

Caldwell shrugs, “Just that you were with me and _if_ you had an altercation with Quinn Heard – who, for the record, had his new lawyer personally wake Cameron up – it was probably self-defense, seeing how you have a huge bruise around your eye. I kept it vague.”

“Well…” Mike closed his eyes and winced. “What did he say?”

“He said Heard’s in the hospital with a few broken ribs, a concussion, a broken nose, and not many teeth, but apparently he’s very much alive,” Caldwell sat in a chair across from the couch. “And I guess his new lawyer is a real asshole, but with a track record of getting guys like this off. Which, personally, I think is why Cameron’s so pissed you gave them leverage by beating Heard up in the first place. Just a guess, though. Anyway, he said he’s booked ‘til 2, so call him after that but not a second later. And, I quote 'do not go anywhere near Quinn Heard again for the love of god.' Though I think that goes without saying, huh?”

Mike can barely take it all in. His head hurts too much. He feels like he’s swallowed razors, which he slowly recalls is probably related to how many times he vomited and coughed last night. Reaching for the water in front of him, he pops the aspirin in his mouth and hopes they’re strong enough to make a dent in a hangover this bad.

 “I need to fix this with Cameron,” he announces, suddenly very nervous. “And I need to go see Harvey.”

“I figured,” Caldwell says. “I can borrow someone from Louis and you can have the day.”

Mike nods gratefully, rocking a little, pulling the unfamiliar blanket back up around his shoulders. He glances at Caldwell, who has stood up and is pulling on his suit jacket. He looks oddly calm for someone just recently dragged into the crosshairs of Mike Ross’ disastrous life.

“You can stay here a while if you want to sleep it off some more,” Caldwell offers.

Mike thanks him quietly, and nearly leaves it at that. But as Caldwell heads to the door, Mike’s insecurities get the best of him.

“If you’re just doing this for me because you feel bad for taking Harvey’s place at the firm,” Mike calls. “You don’t have to.”

Caldwell stops and turns around, “Doing what, Mike?”

Mike points to the pillow, the blanket, the water, his phone. He throws up his hands. “I don’t know. This, this, that. Picking me up from the bar…” he squints as if trying to remember more. “Letting me sleep on your couch. Covering for me with Cameron Dennis...”

Caldwell just stares for a few seconds, looks down at the floor and then back up. “Is that what you think it is? Guilt?”

Mike studies him, but he can’t read his expression the way he could always read Harvey’s.  “I don’t know,” he admits. “It just seems like people only treat me well because they know it’s what Harvey would want. So they’re not really doing it because they like me or they respect me, they’re doing it for him.”

Caldwell takes a few steps further back into the room. “Well, I don’t know Harvey. I only know you.”

He leaves Mike after that, sitting on the couch with a hundred unanswered questions and even more problems that he doesn’t have the lucidity to know how to solve right now. In desperation, he grabs his phone and – before shoving his face back into a pillow – he sends a Hail Mary text to Cameron Dennis.

_I am so sorry. Tell me how to fix this._

_*_


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So things will continue to get worse for Mike before they better...of course.
> 
> and there'll probably be about 12/13 chapters. :)

 

*

 

If Mike thought that his grief- and anger-fueled assault against Quinn Heard caused problems the next day, then the following week is a million times worse.

Cameron spends three days enacting damage control, but by Thursday, he’s forced to call Mike into his office to give him the bad news.

Mike is doing research on a bank merger in his cubicle that afternoon, trying to keep his mind on work instead of Harvey, or the disaster he turned the Heard case into, or the dull throbbing in his head. If he’s being honest, he hasn’t spent the past three nights particularly sober. The generally ill feeling of a hangover follows him everywhere, makes him want to curl up on the floor and cry and vomit at the same time.

What little attention he’s managing to give the merger is interrupted when Caldwell whisks by, shoves a foam cup into his hand, and nods for him to get up and follow.

“Drink this.”

“Okay. What is it?” Mike asks, falling into stride.

“It’s coffee, Mike, don’t be so suspicious. You were falling asleep at your desk,” Caldwell glances at him and wrinkles his nose. “You also look a little green around the gills.”

“I’m not susp—I wasn’t faling asleep, I was concentrating. On the merger,” Mike shakes his head, runs a hand through unwashed hair and sighs. He knows that by now, Caldwell isn’t fooled by him, his words, or the unconvincing façade of wellness he’s struggling to hold up.

“I…don’t feel very good,” he admits after a minute. Caldwell doesn’t say anything, so Mike changes the subject, steering it back into work territory. “Hey, uh, you did criminal law for a while, right? Do you think you could—”

“Regale you with stories about how I defended the white collar criminals of the Bible Belt?” Caldwell looks over his shoulder at Mike and rolls his eyes. “I’d love to, but unfortunately we’re late for our meeting.”

Mike frowns and looks at his watch, “But I thought it was at four?”

“Was,” Caldwell says. “Now it’s at three thirty.”

It’s that exact moment, as they’re closing in on the boardroom, prepared to sign a multi-million dollar merger – the majority of the facts of it all stored in Mike’s mind – that Cameron Dennis calls.

The ringing of Mike’s cell phone makes him jump. It’s a critical testament to his state of mind, compromised startle response, and a nervous system that’s been put through the ringer. He answers quickly, throat tightening at Cameron’s request that he meet him at the D.A.’s office. It has to be bad, Mike realizes, if it’s something he doesn’t even want to tell him over the phone. And Cameron isn’t one to mince words or spare feelings, so when Mike says he’s about to walk into an important meeting and Cameron again requests him, Mike’s stomach churns with dread. He really fucked up the case. He knows it, he can feel it inside him, twisting around in the form of guilt and regret and self-loathing.

Caldwell knows who’s on the other end of the line, if only based on the way Mike stumbles over reasons why he can absolutely _not_ leave work, before looking up at him, his face ridden with apology.

“Go,” Caldwell says.

Mike looks like he wants to dissolve. Which is also how he feels, he just doesn’t realize how obvious it is. “Are you sure? Shit, Bryant, I’m sorry, I’m really—”

“Mike, it’s okay. Just go. Come back when you’re done.”

With a shaky breath, Mike tells Cameron he’s on his way, before ending the call, thanking Caldwell, and turning to leave. His hands are tingling with anxiety as he heads toward the elevators, which is when he sees Jessica, in his peripheral vision, striding toward Caldwell.

“Where’s Mike?” he can hear her asking, and he feels a bead of sweat forming on his forehead. Liquor still seeping out of his pores, more apt. He wipes it away and jams the down button, looking over his shoulder in time to see Jessica staring back, expression unreadable, and her head shaking very, very slowly.

Mike doesn’t want to leave Caldwell hanging. In fact, he feels awful about it, not even off the floor yet but it’s eating him alive. And he’s not looking forward to meeting with Cameron, either, if the man’s tone had been any indication of what's in store. But he feels bathed in sickness, mouth dry, palms clammy and all of his nerves ignited, Jessica’s face looking less and less empathetic the longer he looks back, slowly transforming into something else – disappointment, maybe, and bitterness.

This place Mike used to love, it feels toxic. Which may be himself, of course, the one thing in the world he can never truly get away from. But all of a sudden, in almost near-panic, Pearson Specter Caldwell becomes a place he can’t get away from fast enough.  

 

*

 

As much as he prepares himself on the way to the D.A.’s office, Mike still isn’t ready when Cameron tells him that Heard’s lawyer levied filing attempted murder and felony assault charges if the case wasn’t dismissed.

It’s another blow that Mike can hardly process.

“What the hell are you _talking_ about?! I didn’t try to _kill_ him!”

“Apparently whether you tried to or not, you almost did,” Cameron replies. His tone is calm, a marked difference in their voices as Mike stands staring wildly at him, already having drawn curious looks through the glass of the office. “You broke half the bones in the man’s body. The doctor said one or two more kicks and he would’ve suffered a brain bleed.”

“Good!” Mike snaps, beginning to pace.

“Yeah, except thanks to your little Bruce Wayne-vigilante expedition, I couldn’t even plea bargain this out.”

Mike pauses. “So, what, you’re saying you let him _walk?!”_

“It was either he stayed out of jail,” Cameron stops and sighs. “Or you went in.”

“This is so unfair!” Mike gasps, tears flooding his voice. “He told me he did it on purpose, he tried to do it, he _planned_ it, he _tried_ …”

“And that confession might have held up, if you’d thought to come to me about it instead,” Cameron says. “Even if it didn’t, we still would’ve had him on leaving the scene, which is a felony, in case you were high the day Harvard went over that.”

“You promised me…”

 “I didn’t make you any promises,” Cameron reminds him.

And Mike knows he has no right to accuse Cameron of doing anything other than his best, of trying with fire, wind, and rain to fix Mike’s huge emotionally-motivated fuck-up, but he can’t help it. He’s angry, he’s hurt, his life has become a constant back-to-back string of let downs and tragedies.

“You made me think you were gonna win this,” Mike tells him, glaring. “You made me think—”

“I didn’t even want this case to begin with!” Cameron barks, dropping a file onto his desk with a slap. “You came to me and you guilt tripped me into taking it and then you went and beat the shit out of the defendant and then I had to be the one to say to him, yeah, _we_ fucked up, and _you_ get to walk. You think that’s fun for me?”

Mike winces at the words. Cameron steps closer, hands gesticulating in frustration as he continues.

“I’ve been doing this since you were a careless night waiting to happen, Mike. I don’t plea bargain. I don’t lose. And I _definitely_ don’t make deals with washed up, sociopathic defense attorneys. But you know what? I had to. I had to, because I had to cover _your_ ass. Because I had to make sure _you_ were okay. Because I had to look out for _you._ Because if Harvey—”

Mike’s head snaps up like a rubber band, his eyes cold and watering, his word a warning and a plea. “Don’t.” He points his finger and shakes his head. _“Don’t.”_

But Cameron does anyway, though his voice softens considerably. “…Because if Harvey was here, he’d never forgive me if I didn’t.”

They both fall quiet, silence only offset by the muffled sounds of people talking and shuffling outside the office door. Mike’s shoulders slump.

“I’m sorry,” he finally mumbles, defeated even at his core.

“I know,” Cameron sighs heavily, giving him a pat on the shoulder before heading out. “Me too. For what it’s worth, kid, I did try.”

He leaves Mike standing there, head hung, every corner of his world crashing in around him.

 

*

 

Needless to say, Mike doesn’t go back to work after that, but to the hospital.

Staff know his face by now, so no one even questions when he walks by the reception area and into Harvey’s room. If they look at him at all, it’s to give him a brief and sympathetic smile.

At Harvey’s side, Mike just looks at him numbly, déjà vu washing over him as the scene plays out like all the ones before have for the past three plus months. The same consistent beep of the heart rate monitor, the same wheeze-click-hiss of the ventilator, the same white sheets, the same blankness and absence of expression on Harvey’s face.

Mike starts to cry. History repeats.

But he throws the future a curve ball by reaching down with trembling hands, dropping the railing of the bed. It’s a tight fit when he squeezes into the small amount of space left on the mattress at Harvey’s right side, but the bed is big enough and Mike is small enough, and he manages to curl up there, plastered against him, careful not to disrupt any of the tubes and wires as he rests his head just above Harvey’s shoulder.

With a shudder, he tugs the railing up until it clicks back into place, and settles in. No one tells him to move. And when he falls asleep, nobody wakes him.

 

*

 

When the tail end of the week goes from bad to worse to _hell_ – Mike is forced to revise his original belief that there was ever a cap on how bad things could actually get.

He’s on day six and a half of a serious bender when he gets into a fight with Jessica. It’s a long time coming, he knows, and was probably slated to happen whether he’d been getting drunk every night or not. There’s just been too much repressed hostility between them. Too many awkward passings in the hospital hallways, too many occasions where Mike shows up late and ducks out of work early or has an anxiety attack or ditches a meeting and Caldwell has to cover for him.

Eventually it has to come out, and it does, in an angry, volatile argument in Caldwell’s office.

The final straw, apparently, is a clause Mike missed that Jessica insists cost them a great deal of time and money, something she’s convinced he never would have missed had he been taking his job seriously “like he used to”. It’s an insult disguised as a compliment wrapped in cruelty, and Mike’s temper is flaring under the surface.

Caldwell stands by his desk looking between the two of them, unsure when or how to jump in and whose side to take if he does. It escalates before he can make a decision.

“Your work is sloppy,” Jessica says. “It’s below par for you and it’s below par for this firm.”

“Jessica, with all due respect, I haven’t lost a case since Mike’s been working with me,” Caldwell tells her.

She isn’t swayed. “He’s been lucky,” she says, looking at Mike and then glancing at Caldwell with a raised eyebrow. “And babied.”

Mike gapes in disbelief. _“Lucky?_ You call _anything_ that’s happened to me this year – hell, my _whole life – lucky?!”_

Jessica’s tone is harsh when she replies, “Get your shit together before you lose your job over a God damn ghost.”

All the air in Mike’s lungs is forced out. He feels sucker punched by the words and the coldness they’re delivered with. His blood is hot and the room feels like ice and his heart his pounding and Caldwell is across the room shaking his head and Jessica is staring him down, challenging him, daring him to crack, and Mike can’t take anything anymore, so he does.

He’s spent, and it’s so obvious that this isn’t about work at all, but about Harvey and the decisions Mike made about his life and his care, that the entire argument feels like an overwhelming personal attack that rips Mike apart from the inside out. Jessica hates him for what he did – he can see the contempt in her eyes, resentment that may well have been there all along if he’d been paying a little more attention. It looks like a long-brewing storm and Mike has an uneasy feeling that this ultimatum isn’t the full force of it.

With a shaky breath, he grabs his jacket off the couch, throws his key card on the table and storms by her.

 _“I fucking quit!”_ he snarls, jerking open the door. He flies past Donna, who looks alarmed, but not confused, and it’s clear that she’s listened to every word. But when she calls out to him, he ignores her, knowing she’s essentially bound to her desk by obligations and the ringing phone and impending deadlines, and that she won’t be able to follow him out. She’ll show up later, he knows, but maybe by then he’ll be able to talk.

He makes it to the elevator, frantically jamming the arrow and about to make a bolt for the stairs, when he hears Caldwell marching over to catch up with him. The doors open right on cue and he practically heaves himself inside.

 _“Don’t_ follow me,” Mike hisses, pointing. But Caldwell isn’t quite discouraged yet. He takes the next elevator and rushes out the door to meet Mike on the sidewalk.

Mike hates the view from this spot.

_“Mike!”_

“I _said_ don’t follow me!” Mike shouts, moving swiftly to get away from that place by the entrance where he’d watched the pieces of his life that he’d glued together, fall apart all over again.

Caldwell rushes up behind him, “You’re falling apart, Mike, you haven’t been fully sober since the night you…”

Over his shoulder, Mike glares.

“Just _talk_ to me!” Caldwell pleads, stopping and tossing up his hands.

Mike spins around. “No one gets it, okay? No one!”

“Gets what?”

“That he’s the only person who ever gave shit about me!” Mike exclaims, on the breath of a sad, bitter laugh. “And all anyone can do, all Jessica can _do,_ is tell me that I was selfish, that I didn’t think about him when I signed those papers, that I was putting _myself_ first and…” he pauses to shake his head and wipe his eye. “And that isn’t true. It’s not true at all. I haven’t put myself before him since the day that we _met._ I would _never_ —I love him. All he’s done is fight for me, for five years. How could I not do the same thing for him? How could I _not_ _fight_ for him?”

Caldwell just stands and listens, gives him his full attention, doesn’t interrupt to disagree or critique. After a moment, Mike sniffles and takes a deep breath.

“Look,” he continues. “I know that you…Donna said…”

“What did Donna say?”

Mike looks down at the pavement, his eyes flicking up nervously. “Nothing, I just. I just know, okay,” he stammers. “But I don’t know _why,_ because I’m a mess. I mean, you said it yourself, I’m falling apart, right? Well, this is the best it gets, Bryant. I don’t get any less fucked up than I am right now. And I’m…I’m not worth it.”

“Worth what,Mike?” Caldwell asks. “Decency? Respect? The benefit of the doubt?”

They both stare at each other. It went past decency months ago, but Mike doesn’t say anything more about it. He just shakes his head.

“Just leave me alone, okay? Trust me, I’m doing you a favor.”

When he walks away, Caldwell lets him go.

 

*

 

If Mike was drunk – really drunk – the night he put Quinn Heard in the hospital, then he’s _wasted_ by one thirty in the morning the day after he quits.

It’s another bar – seedy, as Caldwell would probably describe it – and Mike honestly doesn’t even know where he’s at anymore. Harvey would never venture to a place like it and if he was here now, Mike would be somewhere else. Probably at home, in bed, against Harvey’s side and sleeping easily, feeing safe, and loved, and shielded from the exact turmoil he’s going through right now.

But that isn’t the case, of course, as he tosses back another shot of…something, he doesn’t know what it is. He keeps ordering shit that he can hardly pronounce, and the bartenders just keep handing him whatever sounds closest to it, because they’re busy and he keeps paying and no one on this side of town drives a car in New York anyway.

Like they say, though, one is one too many and one more is never enough. The liquor hits him gradually and then suddenly, like just about everything else in his life, until he’s stumbling outside feeling sick to his stomach, vision blurring, sweat accumulating on his neck. He pulls out his phone and staggers toward the wall of the building.

Even in his inebriated haze, he finds the wherewithal to consider that this might be a bad idea, but it passes. He dials anyway.

“Mike?”

Unsurprisingly, Caldwell sounds like he’s been jolted from a deep sleep.

“Did I…sorry…” Mike slurs his words. “Wake you?”

There’s a sigh and what sounds like the rustling of clothes and maybe keys, and then Caldwell replies, “Yeah, well, it is almost two in the morning.”

A pang of guilt slices through Mike’s drunkenness as though it’s merely an illusion, not even close to the armor he hoped for. He’s about to apologize, say he’ll catch a cab, and then hang up, when Caldwell’s voice breaks in again.

“Where are you?”

“Uh, I don’t…I don’t know,” Mike admits. His mind is swimming, all of his problems dulled but not remotely solved. Instead, they’ve just been pushed into the background, replaced with dizziness and a bad headache.

There’s a long silence, and then another sigh, and finally the sound of a closing door. “You gotta at least give me a cross street, Mike.”

About twenty yards ahead, Mike sees a stop light, so he stumbles close enough until he can see the name of the corner he’s on. It takes him a few tries but eventually he pronounces it at least enough that Caldwell can figure out what he’s trying to say.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Caldwell tells him. “Sit down and do not go anywhere."

 

Impressively, Mike manages to _not_ throw up in the car on this occasion. At Caldwell’s apartment, however, it’s another story.

“Is this your place?” he asks, walking unsteadily through the doorway and making a beeline for the couch.

“You’ve been here before,” Caldwell answers, concerned. “Are you that trashed?”

“Don’t know,” Mike sighs. “Thirsty.”

“Yeah, for water,” Caldwell says, retrieving a glass of it from the kitchen. But when he walks back into the living room, Mike is running for the bathroom, eidetic memory kicking in even through the alcohol.

He hangs over the toilet, body violently purging all of the liquid from his stomach. It comes up sour and burning, making him choke and heave, tears prickling the corners of his eyes. It feels like hours, but it’s over in minutes. He flushes, wipes his mouth with his shirt and gingerly finds his way back to the couch, collapsing with a moan of pain.

Usually there’s a cushion between sobriety and drinking-to-the-point-of-sickness, an in-between where his emotions are numbed or his spirits are raised or he just stops giving a shit about anything. But tonight that middle ground is lost on him; he sailed right past it, zero to sixty, piss drunk and with absolutely no beneficial side effects. He feels worse than ever.

“Can you drink this?” Caldwell asks, pushing the water in his hand.

Mike shakes his head and mumbles, “Won’t stay down.”

“Just try.”

Sighing, Mike drinks the water. Having expelled most of the liquor from his body, he already feels a little less intoxicated, but he still rocks side to side, residual nausea resting in the pit of his stomach.

Caldwell waits it out, watching Mike sit and ward off his drunkenness with time. Maybe he should just pass out, sleep it off, but Caldwell isn’t so sure Mike wouldn’t aspirate on his own vomit, and the way he’s rocking and twitching, he doubts he would fall asleep at all. So he waits.

After about an hour, Mike’s eyes look a little bit clearer, somewhat more focused. The sweat on his forehead dries and a small amount of color returns to his face.

“I could talk to Jessica,” Caldwell offers at one point. “Get your job back.”

Mike scoffs, “Thanks but uh…I don’t want my job back. I mean, no offense. I like working with you, I just can’t…well I can’t really stand anyone else there, so…”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I mean…” Mike shakes his head. “I was supposed to quit months ago, anyway. Harvey wanted me to…”

“You’re great at what you do, Mike,” Caldwell says. “Why would he want you to leave the firm?”

_Because he thought he was dying and he wouldn’t be here to keep me from getting exposed and going to prison._

Mike just shrugs. “Long story,” he says, with a small, crooked smile.

Caldwell doesn’t push it. He brings him a pillow and a blanket, and Mike has no idea what to do with them, so they just sit in heap beside him. Caldwell watches intently, trying to get some sort of grasp on all – or any – of Mike’s demons running rampant inside his brilliant head, but he can’t even get close. So instead, he just places a supportive hand on his shoulder. His chest pangs with emotion, and he’s about to speak, but Mike cuts him off.

“I wanna tell you something,” he says, voice still a little heavy with the fading effects of alcohol.

“All right,” Caldwell nods. “I’m listening.”

Mike hesitates, his face going staid. “Okay but—promise me something?”

“What?”

“When I tell you, if you’re mad, I mean, I’ll understand. If you…hate me, fine…I don’t care but just…”

Caldwell frowns. “Mike, what are you talking about?”

“Just don’t yell at me,” Mike finishes, only adding to Caldwell’s confusion. His eyes are pleading though. “If you want me to leave, just tell me and I’ll go. But don’t yell at me, okay? Because you’re the only person who never has.”

“Okay, I won’t. You can tell me anything.”

“It’s bad,” Mike warns, glancing up with nervous, red-rimmed eyes.

“Are you sick?” Caldwell asks.

Mike shakes his head and laughs dryly. “No. No, but that…that would be easier.”

“Just tell me,” Caldwell says encouragingly. “Maybe I can help.”

“You can’t,” Mike responds simply. “And it’s okay, I don’t want you to try. I just want you to know because I…I can’t lie to you anymore.”

He leans forward, a tiny bit more clarity in his brain, but also a lot more throbbing. Across from him, he can almost feel Caldwell tense in preparation of the truth.

“I never went to Harvard,” Mike confesses, a deadpan, as he sucks in a breath for courage. He’s aware that he’s sugarcoating things, but he can’t quite bring himself to say ‘fraud’ just yet. Guilt is already dripping from his conscience.

Caldwell narrows his eyes and nearly laughs. “Mike…okay. I mean I know the firm’s pretty strict with the ‘Harvard only’ thing but…I’m sure you went to a really good school. I’m not…I’m not gonna rat you out for not being Crimson. Honestly, we’re all a little pretentious anyway.”

Mike swallows hard and locks their eyes. “No, I…Bryant, I mean that I didn’t go to law school. At all, period. I…hell, I didn’t even finish undergrad. I’m… _I’m…”_

He’s stuttering now, fumbling over his words, regretting them instantly. Panicking, almost. Not even necessarily because he cares about his future, but because of what it could do to Harvey’s reputation if the word got out. He trusts Caldwell, he does, but this secret has been such a huge deal for so long that it feels like sacrilege rolling off his tongue.

Understandably, Caldwell is taken aback. He opens his mouth, but no words come out. Mike waits, body frozen, for the inevitable slew of disappointment, the million and one questions, to be thrown out, or – and perhaps worse than any of those – for no response at all. He prays Caldwell will keep his promise and not scream at him. Mike knows for a fact that his nerves wouldn’t be able to take it.

He doesn’t even realize he’s crying until the tears run down his face and spill onto his jeans.

“Hey,” Caldwell says gently. “You’re still kind of drunk, you know that? I think you should lie down, sleep it off.”

Mike sniffs. “I’m not that... Say something?”

“What do you want me to say, Mike?”

“Say you…I don’t know, Bryant, I don’t _know!_ I’m so sorry,” Mike stands up, his balance still questionable. “I’ll leave, I’ll just go.”

“Mike,” Caldwell grabs his hand and pulls him back onto the couch. “I didn’t tell you to leave, okay? I don’t want you to leave.”

“You don’t?”

Caldwell sighs, “No.”

“Are you gonna, uh, report…it?”

Mike stares at him long and hard and for a while, Caldwell doesn’t react. Then he shakes his head. Mike breathes a sigh of relief that feels like at least a hundred pounds off his shoulders. He slumps back into the cushions, tugging the blanket over his legs.

“Guess I quit at the right time, huh?” Mike asks, caustic and rhetorical.

Caldwell looks back, face a bit unreadable. There’s sympathy, maybe, a little concern, and something else Mike still isn’t quite sober enough to pinpoint. “No,” he admits. “But I still wish you didn’t leave that way.”

Mike shrugs, “It would’ve happened sooner or later. As soon as Jessica used Harvey against me, I was done.”

“I know,” Caldwell says, nodding. They’re quiet for a couple minutes, and then he stands up, picks up the nearby pillow and puts it under Mike’s shoulder. “Sleep.”

Leaning into the pillow, Mike closes his eyes just as the lights are turned off. If anything good at all has come out of this disaster of a week, and this horrible, miserable night, it’s that Mike feels like the burden of his secret has been lifted to some degree. And while the liquor didn’t do much for his lacking peace of mind, it has slowed down his thoughts, allowing him the possibility of rest, which is usually so far out of reach.

It helps that he’s not entirely alone, that he can hear water running in the bathroom, a door closing; signs of another human life instead of the vast empty expanse of his bed at home and the desolate condo that in Harvey’s absence is now void of even the comforts of white noise.

Mike can only think of his future for a minute, at most, which is a good thing since it looks pretty bleak. He barely needs one hand to count his shrinking options, particularly now that he’s left the firm and on such a negative note at that. But as he curls up, he manages to find a shred of solace and reprieve in having quit – in knowing that he’s finally done at least one of the things Harvey had asked him to do.

 

*


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this chapter didn't turn out completely how i envisioned it but here we go nonetheless. thank you for the kudos and comments, i really appreciate them! and please suspend disbelief for the legal and medical stuff 
> 
> there's some notes i want to add after/about this chapter, but i don't really like putting them at the end - so i'll stick them at the beginning of the next one :)

 

*

Storming out of Pearson Specter Caldwell in an emotional flurry of anger seemed like a fitting end to Mike’s tense five-year run at the firm. Admittedly it wasn’t intentional and while he’s known for some time that he would eventually leave, he never planned for it to be on those terms. In the end it seems like it was probably inevitable, considering the bitter shift in his and Jessica’s already-rocky relationship. But it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t wake up and wonder what the fuck he’s supposed to do with his life now.

The problem is, Mike never planned this far ahead and he certainly didn’t plan on losing Harvey to a hospital room nineteen blocks away. While his future at work always seemed a bit uncertain, he managed to make five years with Harvey’s reassurance and an unfortunate laundry list of blackmailed (former) friends and lovers. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked, up until it didn’t. Up until the accident. Now, Mike knows, it’s for the best that he left. It wouldn’t be any way to live his life, wondering when the ball was finally going to drop; when Jessica would tear up that sheet of paper keeping her quiet, because let’s face it, nobody threatens Jessica Pearson. Not for long, anyway. In fact, if Mike’s being honest with himself, it’s only her loyalty to Harvey that kept her from throwing Mike out on his ass in the first place. After that, for a time, it may have morphed into some sort of secondary affection for him – in the sense that Jessica loved Harvey and Harvey loved Mike and as a result, Jessica did too, even if only a little. Mike believes they’d probably still be fine – friends, even – if Harvey were here; if Mike could just erase the past four months with one swipe of his hand and undo all the bad blood that’s come between them.

And though he still laments – often – over his luck or lack thereof, he is quietly grateful that he still has Donna and has also gained a friend in Caldwell, though their relationship is complicated in ways Mike can’t quite understand, and also a bit prickly ever since his recent Harvard confession. But while focusing on the people he still has in his life, however few, he fails to notice that in losing Jessica as an ally – he’s gained her as an enemy.

And there’s really no worse enemy than Jessica Pearson.

It’s a grenade of sorts; a time bomb just as she’d described him long ago, and it’s in the works long before Mike has any idea. He’s caught up in trying not to sink further into depression, trying to keep his grip on sobriety at Caldwell’s insistence, avoiding bars and hard liquor when he can help it. Donna visits him frequently in those two weeks following his resignation, and they eat, and talk, and generally try to avoid the topic of Harvey if only because it’s still too painful to confront head-on.

Earlier, it was feasible, to some degree, because there were those tiny, minute thoughts of _what if. What if_ he wakes up? It’d only been a week, or two, or twenty days. Anything could’ve happened. But now months have dragged by, almost five, in fact, as May wears on in a way that’s agonizing for Mike. And by now the possibility of any medical miracles suddenly and randomly taking place, in direct opposition to educated medical staff and brain scans, has dwindled.

It’s hard to talk about a hopeless case.

Eventually, though, their conversations drift back into Harvey territory, understandably, since he’s the one thing they have in common.

Mike is bleary-eyed and unproductive and at a complete standstill in his life eleven days after abandoning his job in favor of throwing back tequila and spilling his secrets to Caldwell. He feels like he’s pedaling uphill in the wind – exerting all this energy and yet, getting nowhere. He’s exhausted from doing absolutely nothing. In fact, the only routine he’s able to keep up at all are his regular visits to hospital room 807, where he sits and stares and sometimes cries and eventually curls up and sleeps away his despair.

On day twelve, Donna has seen enough of it and can’t watch him teetering on the edge of self-destruction any longer. She’s on the receiving end of one of his infamous bitter retorts that she no longer takes personally. Grief sometimes has an ugly tongue, but inside, it’s still grief. And that, she knows, from her own experience, doesn’t come from a place of bitterness. It comes from weakness, from suffering.

“If you’re just gonna come here and feed me and try to tell me how I feel, then don’t come anymore,” Mike snaps. He pushes a plate away from him, but he doesn’t get up and retreat to the bedroom. Isolation is overrated and as he discovered after the accident, vastly unhelpful in making him feel any better. “You have no idea how I feel.”

“You’re right,” Donna says, after a beat of silence. “I can’t imagine how you feel. But I think I have a bit of an idea, considering. And I’m going to go out on a limb and say probably like you don’t want to get out of bed in the morning or go to sleep at night and you don’t want to eat and you don’t want to see anyone but you don’t want to be alone either. Like time is standing still. Am I close?”

Mike just looks up at her with a permanent frown but doesn’t react.

“You feel invisible,” she continues. “But you’re not, Mike. You’re not. Everyone else still sees you. I still see you. Caldwell still sees you. Though whatever happened with you guys after you quit, spooked him pretty good.”

“I told him…you know,” Mike rolls his eyes and waves a hand. Practicing law without a license seems almost trivial now, given everything else that’s happened. Hardly worthy of a complete sentence at this juncture.

“I figured,” Donna says. She looks at him and then adds, “What I’m saying is, the days still pass, Mike. You might not feel like it right now, but you’re still alive. And you’re only twenty-seven years old for God’s sake. I don’t know everything he wanted or didn’t want, but I do know this: Harvey would _not_ want you to tap out this soon.”

They sit quietly for a few more minutes and then Donna stands up and clears the table.

“I have to get back to work,” she says, planting a motherly kiss on Mike’s head. He grunts his appreciation and waves her out, pulling his knees to his chest and staring at a wall long after she leaves.

 

*

 

Mike stares at his laptop for almost an hour after he presses _submit._ His heart beats a little fast, like he’s just taken a leap of faith that he can’t undo.

The screen taunts him.

_Thank you for your application to Fordham University. Unfortunately, the deadline for the Fall 2016 semester was March 19, 2016._

Spring 2017 sounds like a lifetime away. What it really means is January, which isn’t necessarily a far cry from August. But for Mike, in his increasingly numb state, it’s way too long. He knows if he puts this off, he’ll lose the will to see it through.

After about thirty helpless minutes of wondering just exactly how to get around this technicality, Mike pulls out his cell phone, scrolls down to a contact he never thought he’d have in it, and hovers his thumb over the name.

Finally, with the help of a few pep talks and a glass of scotch – that no one will ever know about – he takes a deep breath and makes the call.

“Prescott Blake.”

The voice is all-business, a little pre-occupied, but otherwise friendly. In fact, it’s a much friendlier voice than anyone else Mike can think of off the top of his head. Even Caldwell doesn’t answer the phone so casually. And Harvey, forget it – it was like he intentionally tried to intimidate the other end of the line before the conversation could even start. Mike almost smiles at that memory, but a persistent _Hello?_ jolts him back to the task at hand.

“Hey, it’s, uh, Mike. Ross.” Mike maintains a sufficient poker face – voice? – and even impresses himself.

Blake is silent for a second, definitely multi-tasking, but he quickly catches up, “Oh, hey, Mike, what…how are you doing?”

Mike brushes off the obligatory wellness check. The truth wouldn’t be uplifting for either of them anyway. “Actually, uh, I was wondering. What you said in your office about school. Does that offer still stand?”

“Why? You decide to make the leap?”

“A couple months too late, apparently. The fall deadline was in March and I…I don’t know, I feel like this is a now or never sort of thing.”

Blake clears his throat, “Yeah, listen, I don’t mind at all. I’ll make a phone call, okay?”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. I’m all wrapped up in a meeting with Montreal this afternoon, but I’ll do it first thing tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah, okay, that’s…” Mike sighs in relief. “Thank you.”

 

*

 

Wallace, Blake, and Schwartz is just as busy the second time Mike walks in as it was the first. This time Linda gives him a polite smile instead of a suspicious stare, and waves him back.

“Hi,” Mike says, lingering in Blake’s open doorway.

“Come on in, Mike.”

“No, I can’t stay, I’m…I’m on my way to the hospital. But I got your voicemail and I was nearby so I thought I’d just step in and say thanks for…thanks for making that call for me. I really appreciate it.”

Blake nods, “Not a problem. You’re welcome.”

Mike is about to leave, but hesitates. “Hey, uh, can I ask you something?”

Shrugging, Blake looks up from his desk. “Sure.”

“Do you like me?”

Blake is quiet and then he laughs.

Mike can feel his face going red. Clients he could handle, witnesses he could convince, but un-work related awkward social situations have never been his forte. “That’s uh,” he shakes his head. “I didn’t mean it that way, I uh—”

“Look, Mike,” Blake interrupts, clearly amused. “You’re really sweet and I suppose you do know about my track record of luring in a young Harvey Specter with my charm but you’re twenty-seven and I’m afraid that’s just pushing the envelope.”

Mike stares, embarrassed, and forces a laugh at the joke to relax himself. “I’m sorry, I swear that came out wrong. What I meant was…you’re doing me this favor and I guess I just wanted to know if it’s strictly because of Harvey or if…I don’t know, you think I’m worthy of helping anyway.”

Blake studies him, swiveling in his chair and leaning forward. “Does it really matter?”

Mike shrugs. “It matters to me.”

“Look, I have connections at Fordham. It wasn’t huge effort on my part.”

“You still helped me.”

“You’re a nice kid, why wouldn’t I?”

“Thanks.” Mike looks at his feet and shifts uncomfortably. “I just feel like some people have only helped me lately because they feel bad for me. I’m sorry if…it was a weird question.”

“It’s okay,” Blake smiles. “No harm, no foul, right?”

Mike smiles back, “Right.”

He’s prepared to leave – for real this time – when Blake stops him.

“I spent ten years there, you know. Four in undergrad, three in law school, T.A.-ing the entire time and for three more years after I graduated. For a decade I lived and breathed Harvard,” he stops to scoff. “No wonder I fled the country once I left. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the place, but I had my fill. What I’m saying, Mike, is that I know a Harvard grad when I meet one.”

Mike stares back, listening, trying to process, his chest feeling tighter and tighter as Blake’s eyes burn a hole through him.

“And you’re not one, are you?” Noticing Mike’s wide eyes, he adds, “That’s a compliment. I can tell you’re much smarter.”

Feeling dizzy, Mike grips the doorframe with one hand. “I’m…”

He’s not a current liability, but the cards are still on the table. In fact, there’s five years of cases with his name on them. A million loose ends he hasn’t even considered how or if he’ll ever be able to tie up, and still dozens of potential ramifications for Harvey’s impulsive decision and Mike’s naïve willingness to go along with it so many years. Now that it’s all fallen apart, the consequences feel closer than ever and he can feel the bitterness of them on his tongue, like poison.

“Did you…did you talk to Bryant?”

“Who?”

Mike looks around helplessly, as if to connect the dots, only there aren’t any. Nothing to tie anything to anything els. Just a big fucking mess inside his head that he has no idea how to clean up. “Nothing, never mind,” he says. He figures it’s unlikely that there’s any connection; that Blake probably would have graduated long before Caldwell was even an undergrad at Harvard.

He runs a shaky hand through his hair. Through his confusion he stammers, “I…I have to go.”

“Mike, wait,” Blake calls firmly. “It was just an observation, you know that, right?”

“So you’re not…”

“What?”

“Gonna say anything about…”

“About what?” Blake asks dumbly. “I’m in international law, I have a full schedule.” He taps a stack of papers on his desk.

Mike slumps back against the doorjamb, unsure what should surprise him more – the lack of spite in Blake’s response, or the fact that spite and hostility seem to be the only things he expects from people these days. He can’t seem to accept kindness without suspicion, which he could probably attribute to all of the events in his past – specifically pre-Harvey events – but he’s too relieved to analyze his general distrust of others at the moment.

He gives Blake a nod, which is clearly code for _thank you._ Blake nods back once.

And with another deep breath, Mike walks out.

 

*

 

On Tuesday, Mike drags himself to Caldwell’s after a string of urgent texts. Any other occasion would force Caldwell to venture to his place, if only because Mike couldn’t typically work up the energy to leave the apartment for any other destination except the hospital. And of course the visit to Prescott Blake, which diverted its intended course so fiercely Mike’s head is still buzzing.

Those occasions that Caldwell showed up weren’t unlike Donna’s visits. A clear attempt to intercept Mike’s dwindling emotional stability and often ordering take out as means of keeping him fed. Of course Caldwell couldn’t tempt him with liquor anymore, so it was a little trickier, but he usually managed. And the bottle of scotch Mike still had stayed well hidden. It was still far less than he’d been drinking, so Mike didn’t feel like he was lying when he said he’d been staying mostly sober.

In Caldwell’s living room, Mike lingers by a window with his hands in his pockets.

“I’m glad you came over,” Caldwell tells him.

Mike turns. “You sent me six messages. I thought you were dying.”

“It got you out of the condo, didn’t it?”

Mike shrugs and sits down on the couch, noticing what looks suspiciously like Pearson Specter Caldwell work on the coffee table. He toes it. “What’s this?”

“It’s…a case,” Caldwell says carefully. “That I’m a little stuck on.”

“Ah, you need my brain,” Mike leans back at the realization. “And I thought you just wanted my company.”

Caldwell swallows and looks away. Mike scrunches up his face and studies him.

“You’re still mad at me,” he observes.

“What?”

“About the Harvard thing.”

Caldwell shakes his head, “I’m not mad at you.”

“You’re not _happy_ with me,” Mike counters.

“What do you want me to say, Mike? That yeah, I was a little pissed you put your name all over dozens of my cases. Important, high-profile, multi-million dollar cases.”

Mike rolls his eyes, a reflex of annoyance and guilt and unrest. “We still won them.”

"I never questioned your competence, Mike. I questioned how much that would matter if someone found out you weren't licensed."

"Someone did find out."

"Someone else besides me," Caldwell scowls. “And, that’s not the point, anyway. The point is that you didn’t just put yourself at risk, Mike, you put me right there with you. And all of my clients.”

"I’m sorry, I’m really…you know I'm sorry," Mike hangs his head, heavy with guilt.

"I know."

"And I know it looks like I only quit because of Jessica, but the truth is, I was gonna leave before that. I never felt comfortable doing this to you, but...a day went by and then, then a week, and then two and I tried to tell you sooner but I couldn't. You don't think anyone's really gonna look into our old cases, do you?"

Caldwell looks at him long and hard, eventually running a hand through his hair. "No, probably not," he sighs. "Look, I wouldn’t have called you here if I was still mad at you. I called you here because I wanted to make sure you were alright. And because, yeah, I need your help. I’m stuck on this one, Mike.”

Mike smiles cautiously, echoing his words. “You need my help.”

“Yes,” Caldwell admits, picking up the folder and handing it to him. “Off the books, of course.”

“Of course.”

 

*

 

Mike continues to discreetly help with Caldwell’s difficult cases, which makes him feel somewhat useful and helps – to an extent – take his mind off of being miserable. He hangs off the side of the couch, or sits on the carpet, and reads and memorizes and finds loopholes, exclusions, errors, and revisions that no one else would have caught. In a way, it’s almost like being back at work, except without all of the stress and accountability, and it’s nice to know that he’s still needed.

But it isn’t until he gets his acceptance letter from Fordham in mid-June that his life feels like it’s finally found some semblance of traction. His future feels a fraction less bleak, or at least as though he has something to do to kill time. He takes the letter to the hospital, intent on reading it to Harvey’s still figure, but finds that his room is already occupied.

Jessica is in what looks like an intense conversation with Dr. Nichols, but Mike can’t quite make out their words, and by the time he closes in on the doorway, they’ve fallen quiet.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

Jessica folds her arms stoically, but says nothing.

“Mr. Ross,” Dr. Nichols greets, looking oddly flustered by Mike’s sudden presence. “We were just discussing the lack of changes in Mr. Specter’s condition. I was telling Ms. Pearson that as much as I wish there was something more we could do, given the severity of his injuries, being in this state is probably not a bad place for him to be. If he were awake, he would be in excruciating pain. Honestly, we probably would have medically induced a coma.”

 “Okay, well…” Mike frowns. Harvey’s condition hardly seems like the type of thing one could find a silver lining in. “I’d like to visit him, so…”

Dr. Nichols nods. “Sure,” he says politely, before excusing himself.

Without giving Jessica another look, Mike walks past her and sits next to Harvey’s bed.

“I was just on my way out,” she announces.

Mike shrugs, giving her only the slightest glance. “I didn’t say anything.”

Jessica nods, “Haven’t run into you here recently.”

“That’s because I don’t come here in the mornings anymore. Figured you’d appreciate not having to see me.”

“I was hoping you might stop by the firm.”

Mike scoffs.

“But,” Jessica continues. “This will do just fine.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Mike can see her pulling an envelope from her purse and extending it in his direction. He turns his body in the chair and takes the letter, glancing at it with mild suspicion. Thanks to his overactive mind, a dozen possibilities dart through his head in the span of about three seconds. A payoff? Blackmail? An apology? Anthrax?

“What’s this?” he asks, thumbing open the flap before deciding not to give her the satisfaction. Their fallout floods his memory – angry and bitter – and he sets the letter on his lap untouched. “Did you decide to throw me to the wolves after all?”

Jessica smiles, but it’s not a friendly one. It’s a lot more like the one she wears after she’s played opposing counsel. Even in the already antiseptically-cold room, it makes Mike shiver.

“As a matter of fact, I didn’t,” she replies. “Not everything is about Mike Ross. Despite what Harvey may have led you to believe.”

Mike shakes his head, hoping it’s not too obvious how deep the words cut. He concentrates hard on Harvey’s hand, tracing the lines, the creases, the hair – so he doesn’t have to look up. A distinctly unsettling feeling coils in his stomach and pins him to his seat. When he finally takes out the paper and unfolds it, he laughs nervously.

“You’re taking _me_ to _court?_ For _what?”_

 “I know you’re a dropout, Mike, but I’m fairly confident that you can read.” Jessica looms above him several feet away. “But I’ll save you the time and break it down. I’m petitioning the court to revoke your durable power of attorney—”

Mike’s head snaps up, his eyes wide. “You can’t do that.”

“Oh, but I can,” Jessica assures him. “And you know it. You could recite me the ins and outs of it all day long, couldn’t you?”

_“Why—”_

“I’ll be asking that authority over his care be shifted to me.”

“They’ll never grant it,” Mike says, his voice cracking with emotion. “I’m his fiancé. He _gave_ me power of attorney because he wanted me to have it.”

Jessica takes a step in his direction. “If you were married, I’d say you stand a chance, but you’re not. Engagement doesn’t give you any rights. And as far as him granting you it, you’re going to tell me that it wasn’t done under the belief that you would uphold his wishes – not do the _exact opposite_ of them?”

“I will fight this,” Mike tells her, trying to steady his voice. “I will, I won’t let you do it, I _won’t._ You’re not his family. The court will listen to me.”

“Will they?” Jessica raises her eyebrow. “Will they listen to an emotionally unstable twenty-something who signed DNR papers and then seven hours later had a meltdown and changed his mind?”

“I had a _meltdown_ because he was _dying!”_

“He _did_ die!”

“Don’t say that!”

 “His brain is _dead,_ Mike. He’s gone,” Jessica motions to the bed. “Look at him. Do you have any idea what it does to me, seeing him like this, day in and day out, knowing he didn’t want it?”

“Well, not everything’s about Jessica Pearson,” Mike hisses. “Despite what you may have led yourself to believe.”

Jessica grins bitterly at his insolence, and then it fades altogether, her expression growing cold and vacant. “You don’t want to fight me on this. I knew that you would try anyway, though, which is why I went ahead and got the order first. But let me make it very clear: you will lose. I’ve known Harvey for twenty years – you’ve barely known him for five. You have a history of erratic behavior, illegal drug use, academic suspension. Depression. Fainting spells. Binge drinking. Felony assault. How the hell did Cameron Dennis get you out of _that_ one, anyway?” she arches an eyebrow before continuing. “You’re the poster child for delinquency. You might be a genius, but that’s not what the judge is going to care about when I show him exactly how _unsuitable_ you are to make medical decisions for yourself – let alone anybody else.”

Mike opens his mouth but he can’t find any words. His throat burns, his eyes water. He shakes his head wildly, looking across the bed to Harvey’s face, and then up. “Please…please don’t do this. Jessica—”

“This isn’t payback, Mike. I’m not doing this to hurt you. I’m doing this to help him,” she nods toward Harvey and then looks back up. “I expect to see you on Monday, otherwise there will be a default ruling in my favor.”

With that, Jessica turns and walks out the door, down the hallway, and eventually out of sight.

Mike leans forward, gripping the railing of the bed so hard his knuckles go white. A sob escapes his throat and he gasps, leaning over the side, his nose brushing Harvey’s arm as he cries. Even after everything he’s been through, every trauma, every impossible decision – this degree of helplessness hits him harder than ever.

He leaves a few hours later, in a daze, having never taken out his Fordham letter. It’s only because of the pressing need to figure out how the hell to make sure he wins in court that he even leaves at all – most of him feels the need to hover protectively over Harvey’s bed, but he can’t be in two places at once.

There was only one time he ever beat Jessica at anything – during a pop quiz in Harvey’s office after she found out he was a fraud. It had humbled her, to some degree, but not for long. And that was book knowledge and by-laws, things Mike had stored in memory – it’s a far cry from a judge grilling him on his mental health or stacking his loyalty to Harvey up next to Jessica's. On paper, Mike _knows_ he’s a disaster.

But at a loss for what to do next, and with three days until the hearing, Mike is too overwhelmed and desperate to get a grip long enough to think of who to go to for help or how to prepare. Donna would help comfort him, probably, and while he knows she would take his side, he’s not convinced she wouldn’t see the logic in Jessica’s argument too. Caldwell might have some suggesstions, considering his compassion and his background in criminal law – which at least lends itself somewhat more relevant to this situation than corporate law does. But Mike can’t find it in himself to face either one of them right now. So he goes home, alone, and does the first thing that comes to mind when he walks into the empty condo.

He's aware of the irony of his actions, given Jessica's recent accusations, as he digs the bottle of scotch out of its hiding place, but he just doesn't care. He drinks until the implications of Monday morning start to sound like a distant rumor, and then he passes out in bed with a death grip on Harvey's pillow. 

 

*


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost there! Promise. (Why must I put Mike through so much? The world may never know.)
> 
> Regarding the previous chapter (and this one, too, actually), what I wanted to say was I hope it didn't seem as though I was vilifying Jessica, because it definitely wasn't my intent. I love her and I honestly believe her and Mike both have Harvey's best interest in mind, but since they know him in different ways it makes sense their decisions would be different too. However I do think she's the villain from Mike's perspective, at least for a bit. 
> 
> As always, please forgive my blatant disregard for how the legal system actually works, as well as grave medical inaccuracy/ambiguity.
> 
> And thank you all for the kudos and the comments, I appreciate them more than you know!

 *

 

Mike spends most of the weekend as a ball of anxiety, too nervous and terrified of the potential outcome of court to even focus on thinking of a strategy to win.

He caves to Donna’s presence on Saturday night, allowing her to bring him toast and a few ibuprofens in an attempt to make a dent in his lingering hangover.

As suspected, she does take his side, but carries a torch on Jessica’s as well.

“I think that you both know different sides of Harvey,” she offers as explanation. “We’ve seen cases like this on the news. The spouse and the family never agree. But they both love the patient.”

“She doesn’t love him,” Mike responds, rolling his eyes. His hostility is evident but it’s fueled less by anger and more by fear.

“Yes she does,” Donna says. “And you know it, Mike. She and Harvey were – _are_ – family. But they’re not _in love._ That’s a different relationship entirely, but it’s still a relationship. And you know Jessica. Whether you like her or not, she isn’t petty and she isn’t spiteful. She doesn’t want to hurt you just for the sake of hurting you. But her loyalty lies with Harvey first.”

Mike thinks for a moment and then lets out a small, dry laugh of realization. “She’s the only one who hasn’t treated me _better_ since the accident.”

Donna nudges his half-eaten toast closer to him as a signal to continue eating. Then she looks up, confused, until he continues.

“Ever since it happened…” Mike says. “Everyone who knows Harvey treats me like glass. People who didn’t give me the time of _day_ before, or who don’t even know me, they’re nice to me now.” He stops and scoffs, “They even help me out, like Cameron Dennis. Well, as much as he could before I fucked that all up. And Prescott Blake—”

“Harvey’s ex,” Donna acknowledges.

Mike nods, and then smiles bitterly. “But not Jessica.”

“She did give you a lot of slack with work after it happened.”

“I know. And I know that everyone else just acts the way they do out of pity, or because they think they owe Harvey this one final act of decency, like, 'be good to Mike Ross because it’s what Harvey would want'. But Jessica, she doesn’t do that. In fact, now that Harvey’s not here to stand up to her, she just treats me like shit most of the time.”

“Mike…”

“It’s fine,” Mike shrugs. “I don’t care, Donna. And yeah, maybe this whole thing, taking me to court, isn’t her being petty or spiteful. But we both know she doesn’t think I’m good enough for him. She never did.”

Whether or not he has a point, Donna doesn’t try to argue it. She just looks at him compassionately. “How can I help?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Can you tell me how to beat Jessica Pearson in court? Because I don’t know how to do that.” His voice cracks, “And if I _can’t…”_

“Mike. Listen to me,” Donna orders gently. “Don’t try to _beat_ her.”

“What?”

“Look, you aren’t going head to head with Jessica, cutthroat attorney,” she explains. “You’re going into a courtroom with a grieving woman who honestly believes she’s doing the right thing. You’re not trying to win against opposing counsel. There’s no client. There’s no jury. There’s only you and her and a judge. And the judge is the _only_ person you have to make a case for.”

Mike sniffles. “But how do I _do_ that?”

“Just tell them the truth,” Donna says. “That you love him. You love him so much that you couldn’t let him go and regardless of what he told you he wanted, or what he may or may not have told Jessica he’d want in situation like this, it doesn’t matter now. Because he would understand why you did it, Mike. He would.”

Wiping his eyes, Mike takes a deep, shaky breath and nods. _“Okay.”_

Donna stays with him until he eventually eats the rest of the toast and goes to bed. She doesn’t leave until he’s curled up, all the dread on his face replaced with the temporary peace of sleep.

 

*

 

Monday morning, Mike forgets how to put on a tie. Several minutes and a fit of tears later, he remembers.

He leaves home seventeen minutes early, with no hesitation, because this is one day of his life Mike can’t afford to screw up. He can’t sleep it away, ignore it, or even drown it in liquor. He _has_ to show up. That’s all there is to it.

Once he’s actually there, waiting in a chair outside the doors of the courtroom, his nerves fizzle out.

“I feel numb,” he tells Caldwell, who has strode up to him with a coffee.

“Can you drink this?”

Mike shakes his head. “I’ll throw it up.”

“All right. Definitely don’t need that then.” Caldwell quickly tosses it in a nearby trash can and takes a seat beside him. “How are you holding up?”

Mike just shrugs. They’re quiet after that, with Caldwell unsure what to say that would be even remotely helpful, and Mike too frozen to form words. Eventually, after a few long minutes, he finds them.

“Do you ever just _know_ something awful is gonna happen?” he asks vacantly, staring straight ahead. “Like, you can just feel it and there’s nothing you can do to change it?”

Caldwell sighs. “Yes. But that’s just a feeling, Mike.”

“I’ve had it before, though,” Mike insists, glancing at him soberly. “A few months before the accident, I was a mess. All I could think was that something bad would happen, that I’d lose Harvey no matter what I did. I wasn’t sure how or when, but it felt…inevitable. I thought maybe we’d break up or something…” he looks down, numbness subsiding briefly to make room for a bitter, incredulous laugh. “I even thought if I could leave _him_ first, maybe that would be easier.”

Caldwell just listens, watching him sadly, because he wants to help but this is one situation where he doesn’t even know where to start. He knows Jessica and he can’t say he feels any better about how it all might play out.

“I probably should have,” Mike adds, his voice distant.

“What?”

“Left him. None of this would’ve ever happened. He wouldn’t be—”

“Mike, you don’t know that. There’s no way to know that.”

“Yeah, but I do. Do you know why he took the Valito case in the first place?”

Caldwell shakes his head.

“Because Louis didn’t want it and he convinced Jessica he was too dumb to take it – which he was – knowing she’d give it to Harvey,” Mike explains. “Valito, Inc.’s been our client since before Harvey ever hired me. Whole firm knows they’re a pain in the ass, but they brought in a shit ton of money. And anyway, I did something to piss Louis off that week – didn’t try to and I don’t even remember what it was, just know that I did – and _that’s_ why he made Jessica  hand it off to Harvey. Because he was trying to get back at me by giving us a stressful case.”

Mike stops and stares for a minute before continuing, “If I hadn’t pissed Louis off, we never would’ve taken that case, Bryant. And Quinn Heard would've never known Harvey’s name.”

Caldwell puts his hand on Mike’s shoulder. “That sounds like a lot of ifs,” he says. “The only person responsible for any of this is Quinn Heard. The rest is just… _life._ And bad luck. And none of it – look at me – _none of it_ is your fault, Mike. Okay?”

The weight of regret is too heavy for Mike to believe him, but he nods anyway. He appreciates Caldwell’s attempt to make him feel better, whether or not it’s entirely successful, because he’s the only person who doesn’t treat him differently now – can’t, because they met _after_ the accident, when Mike’s life was already in shambles. Caldwell didn’t offer him pity because of it and since he has no connection to Harvey – aside from their both being Harvard alums – his kindness isn’t the result of some professional courtesy he feels that he owes. It just is.

“Will you, um…” Mike points cautiously toward the doors. “Come in there with me?”

Caldwell smiles supportively and says, “Of course,” knowing that if he can be there for moral support, it’s better than nothing, and it’s a hell of a lot more than Mike has without him.

 

*

 

So much of Mike’s life up until this point has been decided by outside factors and other people. Someone decided to drink and drive when he was eleven. The Dean his freshman year was having a bad day. A redhead thought Rick Sorkin was witty enough to meet Harvey Specter.

Some of those decisions changed his future for the better, some for worse. And with the way court is going, Mike has the sinking feeling that this isn’t going to be one of the better outcomes.

At first, Judge Altman seems tired; a dismal sign. Then he’s a little too friendly in his greeting of Jessica; an even worse sign. Mike even takes a moment to turn around and mouth _Conflict of interest?!_ to Caldwell, who only shakes his head in response. Because who _doesn’t_ know of Jessica Pearson?

The first thirty minutes are tedious. The basis for the petition is established. Jessica stands looking like the picture of composure and logic as the judge begins his questions.

“Can you explain your relationship with the patient?”

“I can,” Jessica says stoically. “I knew Harvey over nineteen years. He was an employee at my firm. I put him through law school, after which he began working for me. Eventually we became colleagues and close friends.”

 “That’s a long time,” Altman observes. Then he turns his head toward Mike and asks, “What about you, Mr. Ross?”

Caught off guard, and still wincing at Jessica’s past tense words, Mike is lost for a reply.

“Mr. Ross?” Altman repeats. “Care to explain your relationship to the patient?”

“Uhhh,” Mike takes a deep breath. “I’m his fiancé.”

The judge makes a _go on_ gesture with his hand as if Mike’s answer is insufficient, “Continue.”

“I’ve…known him for five years,” Mike says, fiddling obsessively with his tie and buttons. He’s never struggled under pressure like this, but then again, he’s never had so much on the line. “We’ve lived together for almost two years.”

“I see,” Altman looks down, presumably reading, and then looks up at Jessica. “I have the documents showing Mr. Ross was granted durable power of attorney by the patient over two years ago, in April of 2014. What are your grounds for contesting this?”

Jessica appears unfazed. Whether or not she is, Mike will probably never know.

“As I said, Harvey and I have a nineteen year history. While our relationship wasn’t sexual—”

On the other side of the small room, Mike makes an offended noise of shock. Behind him, Caldwell shakes his head in exasperation.

Altman frowns, “Mr. Ross,” he says, in warning. Mike bites his tongue.

“I believe I have a better understanding of what Harvey would have wanted in this situation,” Jessica continues gracefully, ignoring the interruption. “Based on conversations I've had with him in the past. As well his written wishes, which I believe you have in front of you.”

“I do,” Altman confirms, looking back to Mike. “Mr. Ross, I have to agree with Ms. Pearson. Mr. Specter’s wishes were _very_   clear. And I have a copy of a DNR order with your signature on it.”

“That order was cancelled,” Mike says.

“Why?”

“Because I signed it in the ambulance on the way to the hospital,” Mike explains, finding a fleeting but incredible moment of confidence. “If you look at the corners, you’ll notice dark spots. On the original copy, you’d be able to see they are actually red. They’re blood stains. From when I held his hand and then picked up one of the paramedic’s pens. My signature, it trails off the edge of the paper, right?”

A little stunned by the sudden certainty, Judge Altman just stares back down at the photocopied document. He finally looks up and gives a restrained nod.

“It’s because we were going fifty miles an hour,” Mike continues. “And my hand was shaking.”

There’s a brief silence in which neither Altman or Jessica speak. Mike waits with bated breath.

“In seven hours,” Altman finally states. “You went from signing a DNR order declining any form of lifesaving effort whatsoever, to giving staff the okay to exhaust _all_ medical efforts to resuscitate him-”

“I changed my mind.”

“And your inability to let go is understandable. Unfortunately, this hearing is about upholding the _patient’s_ wishes—”

“But he _made me_ his health care proxy,” Mike replies, voice strained. He knows it’s out of line, but he can’t help it. “Because he wanted _me_ to make the decisions.”

“He did,” Altman nods. “But given that you acted outside of his request, Ms. Pearson does have legal grounds to challenge your rights.”

Mike opens his mouth but nothing comes out. His throat starts to ache, dread coiling in his stomach all over again. And just when he feels completely out of options, his brain kicks in, the way it always does, with one last Hail Mary effort to make the best out of a bad situation. Which is what Harvey hired him to do in the first place.

“New York Public Heath Law, Section 2982-1,” he begins, voice stabilizing. “Subject to any express limitations in the health care proxy, an agent shall have the authority to make any and all health care decisions on the patient’s behalf that the patient could make if not incapacitated. Section 2982-4," he barrels ahead, "Health care decisions by an agent on a patient’s behalf pursuant to this article shall have _priority_ over decisions by _any other person_ , except as otherwise provided in the health care proxy or in subdivision six of section 241 of this article.”

Altman stares at Mike, narrows his eyes, and then looks over at Jessica. She looks mildly thrown off, but not especially surprised.

“I’m hesitant to revoke Mr. Ross’s rights to the patient’s care since they were expressly assigned to him by Mr. Specter himself years in advance of this misfortune,” Altman tells her. “Unless you can convince me that he is not acting in the best interest of the patient.”

“We’ve established that being placed on a ventilator was the opposite of Harvey’s wishes,” Jessica asserts, then angling herself slightly toward Mike. “And his memory, while impressive, is also highly selective. He’s leaving out the dying declaration made to him by Harvey himself.”

Altman looks at Mike. “Is that true?”

“No.”

Jessica shakes her head, finally flustered. “Are you kidding me, Mike? You think I wasn’t going to find out that he told you – again – that he didn’t want to be put on a machine?”

Mike glares at her. “He was in shock.”

“He was dying.”

“He was _scared!”_

“All right, all right, enough!” Altman presses a finger to his temple. “Quiet.”

Desperate, Mike can’t heed the order.

“With all due respect, your honor—” Mike begins, ignoring Jessica's scoff and continuing. “Isn’t the entire point of giving someone DPOA and making them your health care proxy because, you trust them to make your decisions _for_   you? Harvey never gave me a reason to believe he wouldn’t want to be saved. You can double check the forms. He never imposed any limits on my decision making. This so called 'dying declaration' is a ludicrous twist on two words he uttered while in shock, after having lost three pints of blood.”

Judge Altman looks thoughtful for a few moments, peering down at the papers in front of him. Jessica feels an unusual and transitory moment of weakness and speaks up.

“Section 2982 also states that health care proxies must be of sound mind,” she says.

Across the room, Mike’s body stiffens.

“Yet, Mike Ross has a long track record proving he is quite the opposite.”

Altman studies them both and then asks, “How so?”

“Irrelevant,” Mike mutters.

“It’s relevant if it affects your decision making skills,” Altman tells him pointedly, not impressed with Mike’s mumbling. He turns back to Jessica, “Go on.”

“He’s shown erratic behavior for years,” Jessica explains, and, really, she didn’t want to take this road, but Mike has left her little choice. “As you know, he’s a former employee of mine. There have been more instances than I can count of unreliability – coming in late, leaving early, frequent outbursts. I have it on good authority that he drinks heavily. He has a history of drug use as well.”

“You can’t _prove_ that!” Mike snaps, which doesn’t seem to do him any favors and only elicits a disapproving frown from the judge.

“I can’t,” Jessica admits, and then turns to give him a pointed look. “And yet, I believe I just did.”

Before Mike can defend himself, Altman’s voice cuts in. “I think I’ve heard enough,” he announces. “Now, I have statements from two different physicians overseeing Mr. Specter’s treatment, and none of them seem to believe there is much of a chance for his recovery—”

Mike interrupts him impulsively, _“Wait.”_

“Excuse me?” Altman raises an eyebrow.

“Just…” Mike looks at him, then at Jessica, and then cranes his neck to look helplessly at Caldwell, whose hands are theoretically tied. Finally, he turns back toward the judge, words failing him almost completely. “Please don’t do this.”

“I haven’t done anything yet, kid,” Altman replies. _“As_ I was saying…” he gives Mike a displeased look. “According to these statements, Mr. Specter’s neurologic condition has seen no improvement in over four months. That, in conjunction with the original signed DNR makes Mr. Specter’s wishes obvious, and it’s apparent that they were not upheld.”

“Hold on,” Mike cuts in desperately, knowing it will only catch him hell. “Please just—”

“Mr. Ross, if you continue to interrupt me—”

Mike shakes his head and falls quiet, shoving his hand into his pocket to keep it from shaking.

Frustrated, Altman continues. “I’m not comfortable transferring power of attorney to someone who is not next of kin.” He glances at Jessica, “Though I do respect the length and loyalty of your relationship with him.”

Jessica nods graciously.

“However,” Altman says. “I do agree with your ultimate opinion that Mr. Specter would not want to remain alive via a ventilator.”

Mike’s shaking so hard he takes his hand out of his pocket and reaches down to hold the edge of the table in front of him. He doesn’t think he’s taken a single breath in forty seconds.

“With that said,” Altman clears his throat, his tone routine, like what he’s deciding is absolutely serious but he’s done it so many times it’s lost any shock value. “I’m ordering that the durable power of attorney granted to Mr. Ross be overturned and Mr. Specter be removed from all artificial means of life support no later than Friday, June 24th.”

Mike lurches forward, both hands bracing himself on the table in an effort to simply remain standing. He hears Jessica saying something like _Thank you, Your Honor,_ and then there are papers shuffling and Altman is leaving and a bailiff is wandering out and everyone is just going on with life as though a terrible mistake hasn’t just been made.

Jessica’s heels click as she walks out without saying a word.

And after moment of stupor, Mike snaps back to reality, a wave of both adrenaline and nausea spiking through his system as he flies out of the courtroom. He ignores Caldwell’s voice calling his name in favor of bursting into the hallway on a frantic mission to find a bathroom.

Once he does, he doesn’t even make it to a stall, settles instead for hovering over a sink, his body trying to vomit but only managing to produce violent gagging. He’s had only toast and NSAIDs in about twenty-four hours, so nothing comes up but bile. It makes his mouth go sour and his stomach clench painfully, and when it’s over he just sags against the counter, heaving and trying to hold himself up.

The door opens and Caldwell whisks in, his face heavy with concern.

“Mike,” is all he says, on the tail end of an apologetic sigh.

Mike stands up straight, on shaky legs, and wipes his mouth with his hand. “I lost, Bryant,” he cries, almost in disbelief, like having expected this outcome isn’t helping him to cope one bit with actually experiencing it. “It wasn’t even a trial but _I fucking lost!”_

Caldwell steps forward, extending his arms, and Mike collapses against his chest, sobbing hysterically. It’s the like final, unbearable chapter in a four-month long tragedy that Mike swears he thought couldn’t get any worse than it's already been.

“I don’t _understand!”_ he screams, fists full of Caldwell’s jacket. “It’s not supposed to be that easy! For them to just…”

“I know,” Caldwell says gently, holding him tight, wracking his mind for something – anything – but even he’s at a loss. Admittedly, it was an unsettlingly swift decision, but, he knows, that’s how the court works. Emotions are only valuable when it comes to a jury. In front of a judge, the only things that matter are facts. And in that regard, he isn’t sure Mike ever stood a chance against Jessica at all. But he stands there, and he holds him, and agrees with him anyway.

After several minutes of muffled but distraught crying, Mike pulls away, not bothering to smear the tears off his face, since they come more quickly than he can brush them away.

“I know you...you've helped me a lot al-already,” he says, taking shallow, urgent breaths. “And we haven’t known each other that long and I’ve just been kind of a burden and I don’t want to ask you for anything else but—”

“Mike,” Caldwell puts his hands on his shoulders to steady him. “You’re not a burden. What is it?”

Mike shudders and sniffles, his whole reality beginning to feel distorted. _“Help_   me,” he finally gasps, despaired. “Please! I’ll do anything. Just…buy me some time, I…I’m _begging_ you. Please help me, Bryant. Please don’t let them do this, _please._ ”

Caldwell knows he should tell him no, in fact, it’s right on the tip of his tongue – _I’m sorry, Mike, I don’t think there’s anything I can do –_ but Mike is standing there, desperate, and he’s never begged for anything, hell, he’s never even _asked_ for anything at all. And suddenly, Caldwell can’t tell him no, even if this is one court order he’s not sure he can find a way around, regardless of all his experience.

He takes a deep breath, almost regretting the words before they leave his mouth, because a broken promise will be so much worse than no promise at all. “I’ll try, Mike, I’ll try.”

 

*

 

Jessica is on the phone, standing by her desk, when Caldwell storms through the door in a fury.

“How the _HELL_  can you do that?!” he roars.

She mutters an excuse into the phone and hangs up quickly, turning around. _“Excuse_ me?”

“Annihilate that kid in court and then just come to work like nothing happened!”

“Mike Ross can hold his own in a courtroom,” Jessica says. “It’s one of the more respectable things Harvey taught him to do.”

“You’re not hearing me, Jessica. You won this petition and in four days you’re going to ruin Mike’s life.”

“I’m going to let _Harvey’s_ life go with whatever dignity it has left,” Jessica tells him. “I’m not particularly concerned about Mike’s.”

“Yeah, you’ve made that pretty clear.”

“This isn’t any of your goddamn business.”

“It is now,” Caldwell insists.

Jessica raises an eyebrow.

“Sixteen years ago, you tried to lure me out of Harvard and into Pearson Hardman, and I said no,” Caldwell continues. “I did my time in criminal law, but you were right. I was too greedy to stay there. So I went corporate. Ten years later, I win a huge case, it makes headlines the week I find out my mother died. And who’s the first person to call me when I get off the plane, not with condolences, but with a job offer?”

“Are you complaining? Because word has it your old firm wants you back, lost a lot of clients when you came to New York. And I can have your name off the wall by sunset.”

“You can’t afford to kick me out, Jessica,” Caldwell replies, calling her bluff. “You need me. And I’m not complaining. I’m _reminding_ you that you wanted me the day I graduated because you knew I was going to be one of the best, and I am. Took the scenic route but you got me. And you made me managing partner. So listen to me when I say that, _yes,_ this _is_ my business. _Anything_ that goes on around here is my business.”

“Well, Mike Ross no longer works here. So it looks like he’s out of your purview. Consider yourself lucky.”

“Doesn’t matter. He was my associate, so I still consider him my business. _Especially_ if my colleague is taking him to court under a bullshit petition.”

“It isn’t bullshit.” Jessica pretends not to be fazed, keeping her tone somewhere between anger and boredom. “And please don’t tell me the kid has _you_ wrapped around his finger now, too. What does he do, spike your drinks?”

“If you go through with this, Jessica, you will ruin him.”

“And I’m telling you – again – Mike isn’t my problem.”

“Right,” Caldwell nods astutely. “Your concern is with the man in the coma. Sorry, I forgot.”

“Are _you_ challenging my loyalty to Harvey as well? Because if you are, you can get the hell out of my office.”

“No! That’s the point, Jessica! I don’t _know_ Harvey.”

“You’re damn right you don’t.”

 _“But_ what I _do_ know is that if he loved Mike even just _half_ has much as that kid loves him – and I think you know he did, whether you approved or not– then Harvey would understand why Mike did what he did. He’d understand why he changed his mind, why he _did something,_ why he fought, why he couldn’t just _sit there_ and watch him die. So, no, I don’t know Harvey, and I don’t need to. Because I know Mike. And I know if you let this happen, it will kill him. It will absolutely destroy him. And you’re all about what Harvey would _want,_ right? So tell me, Jessica, is this it? Is ruining Mike Ross’s life what Harvey would want?”

Jessica stares him down, tightlipped, expression contemptuous. It’s evident that she’s listening, but Caldwell isn’t convinced she’s hearing him, so he continues.

“I’m asking you, please, think about what you’re doing,” he tells her, a little despaired. “Harvey is in a fucking coma, right? So whether you pull the plug or not, the man won’t know the difference. But Mike? Mike is _here._ He’s awake. And the _only_ person you will be hurting if you do this is him. He’s the only person in all of this that suffers. He’s just a kid, Jessica,” Caldwell tosses up his hands and shakes his head. _“Don’t do it.”_

For a few minutes, Jessica doesn’t respond. She takes a seat at her desk, concealing all of her emotions behind the usual façade of indifference. It has a few small cracks in it after today, however.

“Bryant, I don’t appreciate you telling _me_ what to do just because you let Mike Ross get under your skin,” she says. “I didn’t figure you’d be so gullible when it came to a blue-eyed delinquent. Then again,” Jessica laughs dryly, adding, “I didn’t figure Harvey would be either.”

Caldwell steps forward, “Jessica, what are you going to do?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“That’s not enough. I need an answer.”

Jessica smiles bitterly, “Well _that’s_ all you’re going to get.”

Sighing, Caldwell runs his hand through his hair and shifts, impatient. “All right,” he announces finally. “I didn’t want to use this card, but I can’t walk out of here with only the hope that your conscience _might_   kick in. So here it goes.” He levels his eyes with Jessica’s. “Mike told me about Harvard.”

Jessica’s face goes stony in an instant.

“He also told me that you were aware of his lack of credentials – to put it lightly, of course – for five years, during which you blackmailed him several times for his compliance. And then, apparently, he did the same to you, which I must say, makes me proud even if I wasn’t there when it happened.”

“Whatever you’re planning to say, Bryant, I would suggest you think it over very carefully before you do.”

“So,” Caldwell carries on briskly, disregarding her advice. “Neither of you can report the other. But I can.”

Jessica’s voice goes low and deadly, “You wouldn’t do that to me.”

“No, I wouldn’t do that to _him._ But I could protect him, get him full immunity in return for his statement. I’ve done a lot more for people who’ve done a lot worse. Hell, like you said, he doesn’t even work here anymore. No longer a liability to the good people of New York,” Caldwell pauses and then motions toward Jessica. “But you? Distinguished managing partner of a top three firm, letting senior partners hire twenty-two year olds without enough college credits to form half an associate’s degree? Every case he’s ever touched would be called into question. I feel like the press would just have a field day, don’t you?”

“You’re name would be on those cases too.”

“And yet, there’s no proof that I was aware of the fraudulent grounds he was hired on. As far as I knew, I was working with a Harvard educated member of the New York Bar.”

Cornered, Jessica tries again, “Harvey’s name would go down with me. His whole reputation would be dragged through the mud. You could never get Mike to agree to that.”

“Well, here’s the thing, Jessica,” Caldwell says, wiping a hand over his mouth. “I talked to Mike, and right now, his biggest concern is keeping Harvey alive. So I think he’s willing to bend a few rules to make sure that happens. And we bith saw him in court, right? So how far do you think a desperate kid will go?”

Jessica looks out the window, eventually turning back very slowly. “What exactly do you want, Bryant?”

“You want my silence?” Caldwell asks rhetorically, deadpanning, “Then drop the petition. Call the court – now – and tell them you’re no longer challenging Mike’s power of attorney. All of his rights as proxy get restored, and it goes on record that you can _never_   petition the court for this again.”

“And how do I know you’ll keep your word?”

“Because you trust me. Which is why you hired me to begin with.”

Jessica doesn’t look completely swayed.

“And because I don’t _have_   any ulterior motives, and you know it,” Caldwell adds. “We’re colleagues. We’re friends. All I’m asking is for you to leave Mike alone. It doesn’t matter if you think he’s clinging to false hope. For God’s sake, Jessica, if that’s all he has... then let him have it.”

“Fine.” Jessica looks at him with daggers. “But don’t ever threaten me again.”

“Make the call and I won’t.

“Consider it done.”

 

*

 

Mike is leaning against the side of Harvey’s bed, holding his hand and draping another arm across his gown- and sheet-covered chest, when Jessica walks through the open hospital room door. He looks up at the sound of her heels and voice.

“Thought I’d find you here.”

“What do you want?” Mike asks brokenly, hovering closer to Harvey’s body in an almost subconscious act of protectiveness.

“I had a little chat with your friend,” Jessica tells him, not stepping too close.

“I don’t have friends.”

“Ah. So you _do_   have Bryant wrapped around your finger.”

“What?”

“He had a talk with me after court this morning,” Jessica explains. “And by talk, I mean he threatened me. There are only two other people who have ever had the nerve to do that, and I think we both know who those two people are.”

Mike does, but he says nothing. He rubs his bloodshot eyes and turns back to Harvey, squeezing his hand tight in a last ditch effort to elicit some kind of reaction.

“So it makes me wonder,” Jessica continues. “Why is he so quick to stick up for you?”

“I dunno, maybe he’s not an asshole.”

“He threatened to go to the bar if I didn’t drop the petition.”

Mike’s head snaps up, “He what?”

“Frankly, I’m insulted that he assumed my loyalty to Harvey lies beneath my loyalty to my career. But he made a good case in other areas. So I decided to bend accordingly.”

Mike know's that's fancy Jessica speak for _cover my ass_ but he doesn't argue semantics. He just says, a little shell-shocked, “You…you _dropped_ it?”

Jessica nods once. “As of forty-seven minutes ago, your power of attorney was restored and is no longer being challenged,” she pauses and withdraws several neatly folded pieces of paper from her purse and passes them to Mike, adding, “I also withdrew my right to petition the court again in the future. That was one of Bryant’s conditions, so you can thank him for that.”

Still reeling from having gone through the ringer that morning, Mike stares at the paperwork, his mind racing to catch up with the news, body slumping forward in relief. He’s not sure what to say, or if he can say anything at all. He just clutches the documents in one hand and keeps a strong grip on Harvey’s fingers with the other.

Jessica steps toward the exit and then turns back, “For what it’s worth,” she says, nodding in Harvey’s direction. “I didn’t think I would ever see anyone fight for someone as hard as he fought for you all those times.” She stops and faces Mike, her tone verging on humble, “But I was wrong.”

Mike looks up slowly in question. He’s pretty sure he’s never heard those words out of Jessica’s mouth in five years.

“I love him,” he tells her, the phrase falling off his tongue like a heavy vow. “So…you don’t have to worry, ‘cause I’m gonna take care of him.”

Jessica gives him a weak, piteous smile, because she’s not worried, and she does know, but seeing him clinging to literally hardly a shred of hope is almost physically painful to witness. “Perhaps we could make this schedule permanent,” she suggests.

“You mean like how you visit in the morning, and I come after that?”

She nods.

“Okay,” Mike agrees, and then he calls, “I don’t mind if you’re here, too. I mean, if you ever want to come at another time in the day.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jessica replies civilly. And then she turns and walks out.

Dr. Nichols appears not too long after she vanishes down the hallway. He’s holding a tablet and there’s an expression on his face that Mike can’t quite discern and he can’t tell if it’s a good sign, a bad sign, or a mixture of both.

“Mike,” the doctor greets, pulling a chair from the corner and sitting down next to him.

Mike acknowledges him with a polite nod. “What’s that?” he asks, looking at the tablet in the man’s lap.

“Something I want to show you,” Nichols says, opening it. “There’s…been some changes.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Bear with me, Mike,” he answers patiently. “This thing is slow sometimes.”

Tense, Mike takes a quiet breath and waits. The anticipation threatens to snap him like a rubber band if he doesn’t keep his hand curled tightly around Harvey’s motionless fingers the whole time, like Harvey is the only thing still anchoring him to sanity.

“I know I’ve told you this before, but we run scans on Harvey every couple of weeks,” Nichols eventually says. He angles the tablet so Mike can see the images he’s pulled up on the screen. “None of them have been significant until now.”

Mike feels a surge of nervous energy shoot through him. He waits, his eyes flicking from the screen to Dr. Nichols and back again, over and over.

“This scan on the left is from last month,” Nichols describes, pointing. “And the one on the right, here, is from this morning. See the areas in the middle, in orange?”

Mike nods rapidly.

“It’s evidence of renewed activity in his brain. It’s minimal, but it was not present in any of the previous scans. We actually repeated the test twice to be sure, and the result was the same.”

“What does that _mean?”_ Mike asks, his voice pitching. He feels another wave of panic threaten to take over. “Please tell me what it means.”

“I know this is frustrating, but the truth is that we aren’t a hundred percent sure,” Nichols tells him honestly. “There may never be any more than this, or, it could continue to increase. Time is on our side, here, Mike.”

Mike stares at the place where his hand intertwines with Harvey’s.

It’s clear that he’s had more news than he can handle for one day, so Nichols stands up.

“I’ll begin running the scans weekly instead of every two weeks,” he says. “And if you have any questions, you know where to find me. Okay?”

Mike responds, just barely, with a small nod of his head. Nichols gives him a friendly smile and leaves the room.

Overcome, and completely exhausted, Mike dissolves against the mattress and buries his face into Harvey’s side, soaking the sheet in tears all over again. For the first time in over four months, though, they come more from a place of hope and relief than from only sheer misery.

“I’m gonna go back to school,” he promises, crawling into the small space on the edge of the bed where he’s learned how to position himself just right so that he fits. He thinks distantly of his acceptance letter from Fordham – knows it’s at home, abandoned on the counter and indented with the distinct impression of a scotch glass – and then of the things Harvey had told him when he’d thought for sure he was on his death bed.

_Promise you won’t give up on it, if it’s what you love._

He’s not sure he believes that Harvey can really hear him, but with the way things have been going, Mike is no longer completely convinced that he can’t, either. And, even if for his own peace of mind, he snuggles up close, rests his head on the familiar space between Harvey’s shoulder and a pillow, his mouth close to his ear. _“I didn’t,”_ Mike whispers, in an overdue answer to a request that Harvey may have intended to be about school or about law or about life – but had inadvertently made about himself. Because what did Mike really love most in the world?  

The only response to his words, of course, is a familiar, gentle whistle from the machine that consistently pushes air into Harvey’s lungs. But beneath Mike’s palm, Harvey’s heartbeat is strong and reliable in his chest. After a day like today, well, that’s almost enough. And Mike falls asleep to the steady pulse of it under his hand.

*

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew...sorry for the delay, I had to get my focus back! Anyway, here we go. (also, props if anyone figured out who I vaguely alluded to as being Heard’s attorney in prior chapters. And in case I confused anyone, the title does have a more significant role...eventually. with that said, hopefully I’ve begun to start picking up the pieces)
> 
> (side note: I always intended to incorporate Harvey’s brother into this, but it just got away from me, and at some point I figured it was too late to try and squeeze that in with any grace. I like to think his brother would be aware of what happened and would visit frequently. I just couldn’t find the right way to go about it)
> 
> As always, please forgive any typos and disregard the legal b.s. ;) and _thank you_ as always for the comments and kudos, you are the best  <3

*

The rest of the summer passes quickly, two weeks at time, it seems, and Mike is in a dismal, but functioning state of existence for the duration. He splits his time between home and the hospital, and occasionally, Donna drags him out to buy groceries or Caldwell lures him to a restaurant under the pretense of needing his opinion on a case. It’s never a complete lie, because he does need Mike’s help, but he’s slightly more invested in getting Mike out of his head for a while and getting some food into him. And he knows even a depressed Mike will jump – theoretically, speaking – at the chance to be a lawyer in some capacity, even if it is over burgers in a corner booth at nine p.m.

“Why are you helping me?” Mike asks him one night, in the back of a restaurant they’d been to a handful of times, usually on the days Mike could focus; the days he could pry himself from the confining walls of the hospital where he wondered if Harvey had even just the slightest ability to know he was there with him at all.

Caldwell doesn’t understand the question. He looks up from reading a paragraph that Mike has highlighted, and squints. “Helping you what? Exercise your eidetic memory?”

Mike ignores the facetiousness in his voice. “You know what, Bryant. And I told you, months ago, I said I wasn’t worth the trouble. So why?”

Caldwell doesn’t respond. He bites his lip and goes back to reading what Mike has found so groundbreaking in the brief he’s holding. They’ve done this so many times now, discussed cases behind the scenes, and it’s a good setup; a win-win, really. Mike uses his brain and Caldwell wins cases he may not have otherwise won as easily, as quickly, or may have been forced to settle in. And since Mike isn’t actually at the firm, the threat of him being exposed is gone. Caldwell just wishes this particular occasion will go as smoothly as the others; that Mike will tire of playing twenty questions and let it go, and the moment will pass.

But then again, Mike Ross doesn’t let go of anything very easily.

“The week I tried to drink myself into oblivion,” he starts. “The rides home, the hospitality, covering my ass at work.”

“It’s called decency, Mike,” Caldwell replies, and it borders on a snap, edges on bitter.

“Bullshit.” Mike moves his plate. “No one’s that decent.”

“Well, maybe it’s an Atlanta thing,” Caldwell mutters sarcastically. He sets aside the file and picks at his food. “Definitely didn’t pick it up in Cambridge.”

A little amused, but too petulant to show it, Mike just stares. “Fine. But you stood up for me against the district attorney. You didn’t tell anyone about Harvard. You… _threatened_ Jessica.”

“You’re so smart but you’re so oblivious.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I did it for the same reason I did everything. The same reason I lost two cases the week you quit because you weren’t around and it threw me off. The same reason I could’ve handed this file to the drone that’s working for me now, but didn’t.”

When Mike doesn’t respond, Caldwell shakes his head and adds, “I showed up less than two weeks after Harvey’s accident. I took his office, I took his clients, I took Donna. Then I had the audacity to ask you to work for me. Theoretically speaking, you should _hate me.”_

Mike narrows his eyes but still says nothing.

“But you don’t,” Caldwell continues. “I think that’s already a win for me. So just…stop being so resistant. You’re worth the trouble, Mike.”

“Donna said—”

“Let’s not talk about what Donna said,” Caldwell suggests casually, almost managing to mask a flinch. He turns the file upside down and points, “Now, how about you stop grilling me and help me with this instead? I got six point two million dollars on the line and Jessica’s still a little prickly over that whole ultimatum.”

After a few seconds, Mike slides the file toward himself. “Okay,” he relents, and he tries not to smile, but he does, a little. “I suppose I owe you.”

“Precisely my point,” Caldwell says, pointing at him with his fork. “You don’t owe me anything. Besides, you love this stuff. So go ahead, tell me what I’m missing here.” He motions towards Mike’s plate. “And eat, while you’re at it.”

 

*

Fall descends in slow motion; a stark contrast to the way the summer flew by. It’s a gradual drop in temperature and Mike swears he can feel every single minute tick by. It’s both agonizing and necessary, because as it is, he’s only just getting through by taking things one day at a time.

He sits in class at Fordham in late August and feels like a pariah: relatively old and bored out of his skull.

A few weeks later, he discovers that there are some parts of his residual undergrad courses that aren’t _entirely_ under-stimulating. And whatever they still lack by way of intrigue or challenge, he makes up for by going to Caldwell’s and burying his nose in the latest merger.

For the most part, Mike splits his time between the hospital and school. It transcends into a new routine. Sometimes he eats lunch with Caldwell or Donna – his two remaining connections to the living world – and from there, it’s room 807 and a pile of homework that he intentionally drags out well into the evening, or even the night.

One afternoon, Dr. Nichol’s tells him that Harvey’s scans have showed another increase in activity. But with a solemn expression he says – “It’s incredibly minimal.” – and then leaves the room.

With a subconscious vice grip on hope, like a child, Mike feels a pang of _maybe_ in his chest. He sleeps in Harvey’s bed for four days straight, until his back is killing him, he’s late for every class, and all the nightshift nurses start looking at him as though he’s finally become something of an inconvenience.

The next three scans are unremarkable.

“No change,” Nichols tells him, face staid and perpetually apologetic, and maybe a little disturbed that Mike ever even expected to hear anything different.

Mike stands by the window that day, looking down on a somewhat obscured view of Manhattan, silent tears trickling down his face. In a broken sob, and mostly to himself, he gasps, _“What the fuck.”_

 

*

Surviving September is only even possible because Mike doesn’t allow himself a moment’s grace to let reality set in. He goes to school, he pretends that sophomore-level Statistics is fascinating, and commits the notes to memory three different times just so he won’t think about the potential permanence of his new life that’s been so suspended in grief and dread.

He takes the long way home. He plays music loud enough to make thinking somewhat of a struggle. Showers are a breeding ground for deep thought, so he keeps them short.

Homework becomes a federal production that he details out loud to Harvey, and he spares himself a moment to think that, yeah – Harvey would be relieved to be unable to hear about such menial collegiate courses. And then Mike quickly goes back to typing wildly on his laptop.

Sometimes Caldwell shows up, after all the assignments have run out and Mike is thrumming his fingers on his knee, lost in trance with his eyes on the heart rate monitor.

“Coffee,” he says, holding out a cup. “Decaf.”

Mike drinks it because it’s habit, because it comforting, and because Caldwell knows by now that he’s given up caffeine. He has to be able to crash hard when the opportunity presents itself. The more Mike sleeps, the less he cares that his world is in pieces.

It’s being awake that’s difficult.

He begins to feel like comas are a particularly insidious kind of hell. There’s no blood, not anymore. No gore, not in the traditional sense. Even Harvey’s burns have healed, at least to the point that third degree burns can, which is, in thick, scarred patches spanning the length of his thighs and legs and hips. But the risk of infection has passed, and even the proof of the injuries is neatly hidden away beneath clean bandages. Everything is tidy; quiet. Just the same beeps and whirs of the machines. It isn’t messy. From the outside, Mike thinks it probably looks fairly serene. It isn’t like the first day, when it happened, when it was nothing but screaming and crying and terror and blood – _everywhere, blood_ – the smell of burnt flesh and the ringing sound of absolute chaos. But that’s still what it feels like in his head. Only now it’s been going on for months and months and he can’t escape the overwhelming possibility that if nothing changes, this nightmare will just continue.

 

He has a breakdown again, toward the end of the month, throws a cup of decaf against the hospital wall in a fit of emotional pain.

“Mike.” Caldwell’s voice has been a steady, gentle tether to sanity. But Mike feels like it’s beginning to shred. “Talk to me.”

“I need to scream,” Mike tells him, and he hardly recognizes himself in the glare of the window. It’s dark out, nearing midnight. He’s already written off class tomorrow. The future is just so bleak. Maybe other people could move on; maybe he should know how to, too. He’s twenty-seven, after all. A lot of people go through loss. They cope. They let go. They even love again.

But it’s been seven months and Mike’s not so sure he’s doing anything more than existing. Existing in such an excruciating way, he can feel every stolen moment of his and Harvey’s life as a scream perched in his throat that he never allows himself to act on because he’s sure if he starts, he’ll never be able to stop.

Caldwell steps toward him. “Then scream.”

Mike’s behavior is erratic; pacing, tugging at his hair, eyes unfocused.

“Let’s leave for a little while. We’ll go somewhere you can scream.”

“I can’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“No, I mean I can’t _do it!”_ Mike motions wildly around the room. Coffee still drips from a nearby wall. “What if he never wakes up? What the fuck am I supposed to do?” He kicks his school books off of a chair. _“I can’t fucking do this forever!”_

Caldwell closes in enough to rest a hand on his shoulder.

Mike shakes his head. His face hurts and he knows it would help to cry, but more than that – and much _worse_ than that – is the fact that he knows it wouldn’t make a difference at all.

“What if he _never_ wakes up?” he repeats, almost frantic. “What if he _does_ wake up and I’m not here? What if he wakes up and I’m sitting in some fucking classroom with a bunch of nineteen year olds? What if I leave here and he dies?” Mike stops fighting his tears. He’s used to it now, but it’s just monotonous. It feels like all he does is cry, and it feels like the only place it gets him is absolutely nowhere. “What if I _sit here_ for _ten fucking years_ and _nothing happens?!_ I can’t _do it!_ _I need him!”_

“Okay, Mike, you—”

“No, no, no,” Mike reaches the bed like he’s pulled there by some gravitational force. He leans over, touches Harvey for the first time like he’s something other than glass, in a manner intended to move him, shake him, all the obvious but incredibly useless tactics of getting someone in his condition to respond. “You _have_ to wake up!” he cries, running his hand up and down Harvey’s chest, hard, all the material of the hospital gown chafing his palm. “You can’t just _leave me here with no one!”_

Behind him, Caldwell cringes. Whether it’s at Mike’s distress or his words, he isn’t sure.

Unsurprisingly, the commotion draws the attention of a nurse, who peeks in the doorway looking alarmed. There’s an admonishment on her tongue – Caldwell can sense it – so he drags Mike away before it’s spoken.

“We’re leaving,” he announces carefully, tight grip around Mike’s shoulder.

The nurse looks concerned, and a little annoyed, but surveys Harvey once and then leaves.

Mike puts his brakes on. Caldwell pulls him harder. Mike twists violently to get out of his grip. It’s a restrained struggle that carries out into the hallway, which is mostly desolate this time of night.

“Mike,” he warns, gently grabbing his jaw. And when Mike looks at him, Caldwell’s sure it’s the first coherent attention he’s gotten from the kid since he lost it. “If we do not leave—” he emphasizes each word out of a necessity to get Mike to listen. “They are going to kick you out and I don’t know when they’ll let you come back. And you might never get to stay here overnight again. So stop. Take a deep breath and stop and come with me.”

It takes several seconds for Mike to even process the words. His response is nothing if not an indication of just how much of a toll the past seven months have taken on him, on his psyche, on his body.

 _“I don’t know what to do.”_ He whispers, but it’s hoarse, distant; he sounds completely detached and for a moment, Caldwell wonders if taking Mike out of a hospital is really the best thing to do.

Eventually, that option – in lieu of all others, which are slim – prevails. Caldwell brings him home.

 

Mike realizes, for what seems like the dozenth time, that his bed doesn’t smell like Harvey anymore. It just smells like laundry detergent. And himself. And he hates it.

“Do you still need to scream?”

“No.”

Caldwell doesn’t know if that’s good or bad, so he just sets a glass of water on the bedside table and waits.

“I already lost everyone else,” Mike says suddenly, head on a pillow, eyes trained on nothing in particular. “My parents, my friends, my grandmother.”

He’s aware that he’s staked everything on Harvey; his career, his future, his whole life. But there isn’t anything he can do to change it now, and even as the loneliness of the empty bed threatens to swallow him up, he still isn’t sure he regrets it.

“I know.” Caldwell says softly, and leaves Mike in the room with the promise that he’ll stay on couch, should Mike wake up and need him.

Mike thanks him with a miserable nod. After that, his only salvation is how quickly he falls asleep.

 

* 

September’s emotional tailspin fizzles into a weary but saner Mike. He’s still lost, still practicing all the avoidance tricks he’s taught himself when it comes to blocking out the big questions, like just how long he’ll spend in this crushing new reality where Harvey is just another name on another whiteboard in another hallway. But he staves off breakdowns for weeks, dutifully, if not numbly, maintaining his previous routine.

Caldwell makes an effort to join him in the hospital, on the afternoons that he can, _before_ Mike runs out of distractions, _before_ it gets dark out, _before_ Mike has the chance to get too lost inside his own head.

Mike never needs help with his work, of course, but they discuss it anyway, along with whatever other topics of conversation it leads to.

“He’d like you, I think,” Mike says one day, Econ book in his lap, pencil poking at the corner his mouth, one heel on the edge of his seat. He nods in Harvey’s direction, his eyes flicking down to the floor.

Caldwell raises an eyebrow in doubt. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re tough but fair.”

Caldwell searches Mike’s face for signs of a new brewing storm. But to his relief, Mike just laughs.

“He’d _hate_ your suits, though.”

“What’s wrong with my suits?”

“I dunno.” Mike shrugs. “You wear them too big. You don’t get them tailored.”

“You know, back in Atlanta,” Caldwell tells him, from his own chair. “When I worked in criminal law? We spent so much time going to and from court, to and from prison, I learned pretty fast that if I wanted to be comfortable, I had to go up a size or two.” He glances down and tugs at a sleeve. “I suppose it’s less becoming for the corporate world?”

Mike grins and nods.

“Well,” Caldwell sighs, pointing to his face, pretending to be smug. “I think what I lack in professionally tailored attire, I make up for with this.”

“I take it back,” Mike says, giggling at the end of an exaggerated groan. “Harvey wouldn’t care about your suits. You’d be too busy comparing egos.”

Caldwell just shrugs and smiles.

 

* 

On October 26th, eight months, one week to day of the accident, Mike takes a Chemistry midterm at 11:20am and – he’s absolutely certain – aces it. Which he should, of course, since he memorized a third of the textbook, but it’s still good to have a win these days. Even if it is rudimentary when stacked against prior achievements like the LSAT.

He leaves campus, pulling his jacket tighter around him. It’s not freezing, but it’s cold enough.

Caldwell’s waiting for him in a restaurant several blocks away, and greets him with the usual nod and smile.

Mike shrugs off his jacket and collapses into the booth across from him. “How was the meeting?”

“Uneventful,” Caldwell replies. “But the client’s happy.” He nudges a glass of water across the table. “How was your test?”

“Psh.” Mike rolls his eyes, takes a sip of water and says, “Nailed it.”

That makes Caldwell laugh. Hands resting on the edge of the table, he says, “Hypothetical for you.”

Mike leans back. “Shoot.”

“Three clients,” Caldwell begins. “All sole beneficiaries of a trust.”

“Okay.”

“Client One, surviving spouse, is entitled to fifty percent. Clients Two and Three, biological children, entitled to twenty-five percent, respectively. Client Two wants everything in liquid assets, but ninety-seven percent of the trust is property.”

 “Property should be sold,” Mike replies, shrugging. “Value of the trust recalculated and divided evenly in liquid assets between all three clients. Problem solved.”

Caldwell shakes his head. “Not so fast, Legally Blonde.”

“Let me guess. Client One doesn't want to sell the family estate against their parent's wishes, so they're refusing liquidation.”

“Close enough.”

“All right,” Mike says thoughtfully. “Give me two minutes.” He squints for a moment and then smirks. “Hypothetical, huh?”

“Yeah.” Caldwell folds his arms and looks away. “Asking for a friend.”

“Uh-huh.” Mike nods, but it’s clear that he isn’t buying it, and Caldwell’s not exactly selling it very hard either. “So who’s the gold digger, you or your brother?”

With an exasperated sigh – that Mike recognizes all too well as being spurred from misery – Caldwell confesses. “Sister. Half, and mostly estranged. But if I can’t find a loophole, she can sell our mother’s property. And I’m pretty sure that would kill my father.”

Mike frowns. “You have a copy of the will?”

“At the office,” Caldwell replies. “I can bring it to the hospital tonight. If you’re up for it.”

“Anything to make me more useful than I am staring at a heartbeat monitor,” Mike jokes, and it falls a little flat under the gravity of things, but Caldwell shoots him a smile for the effort.

Mike’s about to assure him he could use the distraction – hell, he could use anything more challenging than sophomore level college work – when his phone rings. He picks it up almost absently, never looking away from Caldwell, words on his tongue delayed.  Given that Mike’s social circle is about as far from _wide_ as it’s ever been – though it’s also more _supportive_ than it’s ever been, which is so much more important – he presumes it can only be a routine welfare call from Donna. So he answers it accordingly.

“Donna. I just texted you,” he says, not bothering to way for a reply. “No, I didn’t sleep, but, yes, I showed up for my midterm, yes I aced it, and yes, I’m about to eat something.”

There’s a thin layer of playful smugness to his voice, but overall it’s heavy with bone-deep exhaustion and the poorly hidden pain he has buried in a very shallow grave under the surface. He’s trying to fake it until he makes it and it’s working on such a meager, superficial level that, across the table, Caldwell winces.

Mike gives him a weak but practiced smile, like he’s amused even himself by staying two steps ahead of Donna’s inherent nurturing and maternal vigilance. But she isn’t calling him out on his cheekiness. She isn’t saying anything. Instead, there’s a beat of silence in his ear and then a voice he recognizes, but not for the reasons he expects.

 “Mike Ross? This is Dr. Nichols.”

The phone hits the table hard, with a violent slap, nearly tipping over the glass of water.

“Everything okay, gentlemen?”

Mike looks up at the waiter, who has manifested out of nowhere with a concerned look on his face.

“We’re fine,” Caldwell tells him, but he’s looking at Mike. “We need a few more minutes.”

The waiter nods quickly and walks away without another word.

“Mike. Talk to me.” Caldwell doesn’t get a response, so he reaches for the phone and intercepts the call.

Mike can’t respond, because his throat is dry and his chest his tight and there’s a swarm of nervous energy in his stomach making him want to vomit. He can count on one hand the number of times he’s received a phone call from the hospital. The first was a recording to inform him of a change in visiting hours, as if he even respected those hours in the first place. The second was a nurse telling him that Harvey had been moved to a different room, and she didn’t want Mike to be alarmed if he’d walked in and couldn’t find him. But that had been the only other call, and it’s been months since, and never, _ever_ has any doctor personally called to tell him anything. And he knows immediately, in his gut, that it means one of two things: Harvey is dead…or Harvey is awake.

Neither prospect is something Mike’s equipped to deal with, evidenced by all the color that’s draining from his face. For a minute, his perception skews. Caldwell’s voice slips into the background and all the hushed chatter from surrounding tables surges to the front. Mike can hear feet scuffing the floor, forks scraping plates, drinks slamming down onto wood, all amplified; stimulus overload that drums in time with his quickening pulse.

 And then Caldwell is standing up, tossing cash onto the table, grabbing Mike’s arm and hauling him up on shaky legs.

“We need to go,” he tells him urgently, voice cutting back into Mike’s ears. “Now.”

But Mike puts on his brakes and shakes his head wildly. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

“I can’t,” Mike repeats, borderline frantic. “I know I can’t.”

Caldwell ignores the various stares from other patrons who have looked up at Mike’s distressed, pitching voice. He puts a steadying hand on his shoulder. “You also thought you couldn’t come back to work, but you did. And you didn’t think you could go up against Jessica in court, but you did that too.”

“And I quit and I lost!”

“But you _did_ it,” Caldwell persists calmly. “You can do this too.”

It doesn’t make Mike feel much less afraid, but it’s enough to get him out of there.

 

*

Harvey’s room isn’t typically the center of so much attention. Mike spends enough time in it to know the schedule; to know when to expect the dressing changes, the feeding, the burn care, the blood draws, the scans. But they’re intermittent interruptions, fairly insignificant compared to the span of a whole day or week, and typically one to two people at a time. This, though, this is different.

Lights not frequently turned on, are nearly turning the room into a display case. The door is propped open. Scrub clad staff talk quietly to one another, write things down, seemingly oblivious to Mike’s arrival. They hover around Harvey’s bed, obscuring most of the view, except for a single foot, which shifts without assistance.

Mike stands outside the door and feels like he’s freefalling off the side of a cliff, hardly daring to trust his own eyes anymore. Dr. Nichol’s approaches him and it’s the only thing that’s felt entirely real since the phone call.

“When can I go in?” Mike asks, despair and politeness and impatience all colliding. “I need to go in.”

“Just give them a couple more minutes and the room is yours,” Nichols responds. It’s a promise and it’s the only thing that holds Mike over long enough to pay attention when the man continues. “You should know that we’re not out of the woods yet. But his vitals are good. He seems to be stable.”

“Is he…”

Nichols picks up on the underlying fear in Mike’s voice and all the terrible possibilities likely running wild in his head, trampling any desire to allow himself to celebrate the news, because this hasn’t been a two or three or ten or twenty-day ordeal: It’s been more than eight long months. Any progress – even something as monumental as _coming to_ is immediately set back by the reality of what it means, which is, that consciousness brings Harvey a whole slew of new and harrowing problems: possible brain damage, blood clots, burn complications, healed fractures, pain, endless rehabilitation – if the latter is even on the table at all. It’s more than enough what-ifs to drive anyone insane, and Mike is already on the brink.

“Can he talk?”

“He can put together limited sentences. He was able to ask for water, and you.”

Mike shuts his eyes, not bothering to fight the emotion welling up behind them.

“He’s oriented, to an extent,” Nichols continues. “He knows who he is, and he knows he’s in a hospital. But he doesn’t remember why. This early on, though, I’m not too worried about any memory loss. It could be temporary.” He pauses and then adds, realistically, “Or it could be permanent. There’s no way to tell right now. And that’s certainly not our biggest concern.”

Mike nods in agreement, though the pang he gets at the idea of Harvey forgetting is painful. He knows that he’s asked for him, so he clearly remembers Mike – but to what extent? Does he know they live together? Does he remember that they’re in love?

“Stop,” Mike breathes, to himself; a desperate command to stave off the unhelpful stream of paranoia flooding his brain. Dr. Nichols looks back and frowns.

“What?”

Mike shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says.

“Are you okay? Is anyone here with you?”

“Um.” Mike gets distracted by several people leaving Harvey’s room. He blinks, and then points down the hall toward the elevators, where Caldwell is talking on the phone, presumably to Jessica. “Yeah.”

 “Good,” Nichols says, sounding somewhat satisfied. He motions gently toward the doorway. “There’ll probably a lot of us going in and out for the rest of the day, but you’re welcome to see him now.”

 

Mike takes tedious steps toward Harvey’s bed, like if he walks too swiftly or too hopefully, he might wake up at home, alone, with no missed calls and no second chance.

His usual seat has been pushed off to the side, so he slides it slowly back to the edge of the bed and sits, breath catching as he reaches for Harvey’s hand and squeezes, and for the first time in eight months, feels him squeeze back. It’s weak, and it’s fleeting, but it’s there.

“Hey,” Mike greets gently, utilizing every trick in the book to keep tame, silent crying from becoming hysterical sobbing, which is a fine line he feels like he’s verging awfully close to.

Harvey’s looking back at him, eyes heavy and glassy but _open_ nonetheless. Every breath is taken with deliberation, a heavy rise of the chest that seems to end on a note of exhaustion. He’s taking them on his own, though, which is probably both a blessing and curse, but still more progress than anyone had expected.

For thirty torturously long seconds, he says nothing, during which Mike begins to panic internally all over again. But then, like he was using those seconds just to work up the energy, Harvey finally responds.

“Mike,” he whispers, voice hoarse from a lack of use. When he swallows, his is wince is almost a full-bodied shudder. The ache and rawness from months with a tube down his throat has taken a toll. He takes a long, deliberate breath and manages another word. “Water.”

There’s a paper cup about half-full on the table, and a straw, and Mike lifts it to Harvey’s chapped lips, letting him drink slowly until he signals with the tiniest of head shakes that he’s done, or just can’t tolerate the discomfort anymore.

“Are you in a lot of pain?” Mike asks, and when Harvey just closes his eyes, he adds, “You can tell me.”

Harvey hesitates but eventually gives him a sullen, reluctant nod.

There are a few minutes that pass where neither of them says anything. Mike just leans in close, one elbow on the bed, holding his hand firmly, while Harvey looks up at the ceiling, breathing and trying to adjust to consciousness. Everything hurts. His head – particularly his head – his bones, his legs, his stomach, his throat, and all for reasons he can’t remember.

Mike feels the slightest pressure of a finger on his, rubbing back and forth, and sees that Harvey has tipped his head back toward him, but is looking down at his hand in reverence.

“It fits,” he observes quietly, running his index finger over the smooth surface of Mike’s ring.

Something in Mike shifts with hope. “You remember?”

But Harvey shakes his head once, the most he can manage without causing his skull to throb more than it already is. “I gave it to you?” It’s more of a hopeful guess than a memory, and Mike sniffles.

“Yes,” he confirms, with a reassuring smile. “You don’t remember the accident?”

Another minute shake of the head and Harvey breathes, “No.”

Mike nods, brief but haunting footage of the scene rolling past his eyes once again. If there’s any memory Harvey can be spared, that’s the one it should be. But it still scares him because he doesn’t know whether or not Harvey has forgotten about parts of their lives, and if he has, how much of it.

“What about before it?”

Harvey swallows. “No.”

“What’s the last thing you remember? I mean, before—”

“You,” Harvey interrupts gently. “Talking to you.”

“You don’t remember getting in the car?”

“No.”

Mike wipes his eyes with his free hand, “Good, that’s good,” he says, pretending not to hear the crack in his own voice. “Don’t try to.”

Harvey gives him a small nod in promise. After a moment spent struggling for the words, he asks, “We’re engaged?”

And Mike’s stomach drops. But he forces a weak, teary smile and nods. Harvey just looks back and blinks, his face contorted in confusion.

“We were talking about what movie we were gonna watch,” Mike explains, biting his lip. “You said don’t go home without you but…” He shakes his head and sniffles again, tugging his hand away for a just second to point to his ring. “Anyway. You left it on the DVD, on the coffee table. There was a note—”

Harvey stares at him sadly. “I’m sorry, Mike.”

“It’s okay,” Mike says, quaking voice and tears betraying him. All he’d thought about was getting Harvey back, but he hadn’t stopped to consider what capacity it might be in if he did. “It’s okay, it’s fine.”

Harvey’s looking around the room, almost in slow motion, expression still perplexed – if not completely lost – when Caldwell steps through the door.

He takes only a few steps inside, looking tentatively at Mike. “I called Jessica,” he announces softly. “I’m gonna go back to work so she can leave. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Go ahead,” Mike responds, and then calls out quietly, adding, “Hey. Bryant?”

 “Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

 Caldwell smiles weakly and nods.

After he leaves, Harvey turns his head slowly toward Mike. “Who was…?” he starts, but trails off, a sharp cough intercepting his words and making him flinch in pain again. He gives up with a tired, frustrated sigh.

Mike reaches forward with his free hand and carefully rests it in Harvey’s hair. “I’ll tell you later.”

He watches him intently for a long time after that, looking for any signs that Harvey might slip back into a stupor; beyond terrified of him even falling asleep at all. But for the most part, Harvey just quietly tries to adapt to all of the drastic changes in his body; the pain, the discomfort, the weakness, the absolute confusion as to what the hell happened to him.

There’s a clock across the room on the wall, and he can’t quite make out the time, but he can hear the ticking, even over all of the other white noise. It echoes a little in his brain, and suddenly, through all the haze and missing pieces, something clicks. He lolls his head gently to the side again.

“That look in your eyes…” he whispers, slow and hoarse, waiting for Mike to look up before adding, “Pure, blue, steel.”

Mike just stares for a second, processing. Then, with a sound that’s half-sob, half-laugh, he folds over, buries his face against Harvey’s side and cries – solely out of relief for the first time.

“Wait,” he says, pulling away after a minute and sniffling. “Does that mean _I’m_   Robert Redford?”

Harvey’s chapped lips form a faint smile. He extracts his hand from Mike’s and reaches up, using what’s left of his energy to run his hand through Mike’s hair. “Not a chance, rookie.”

Mike closes his eyes, searching for composure. “I’m not gonna sleep. If you do, and you don’t wake up…” He’s trying to sound firm, but it’s all coming out broken and fearful. He takes a deep breath. “I swear to God—”

“Mike,” Harvey whispers, gently cutting him off. He puts what little pressure he can manage behind his hand, guiding Mike’s head down to rest back against his chest. _“Sshhh.”_

In a complete reversal of roles, Mike does fall asleep – and Harvey doesn’t. Months and months of sleep debt have Mike dosing off in minutes to the steady, incredibly normal rhythm of Harvey’s heartbeat. It doesn’t even seem to matter that Mike's still half-sitting up in a chair – his body leaning forward awkwardly, one arm slung across Harvey’s stomach and clutching his wrist – because it’s the most sound, nightmare-free sleep he’s gotten since February.

On the other hand, though Harvey is still having a serious difficulty processing the fact that it’s really been _eight months –_ and he has no perception of the passing time – he does feel like he’s been sleeping _forever_ – or at least bedbound for far too long. Long enough to make him feel so weak he can’t even entertain the idea of rolling over, let alone sitting up. But his mind is too hazy, too unfocused to think much about that, which, given the road ahead of him, is probably for the best. So instead, he just lies still, enduring the widespread pain, looking up at the ceiling, the light creeping in from a window, and listening to the busy sounds of people talking and walking in the hallway. One of his hands is slowly stroking Mike’s hair, his other still encased in a grasp loosened only by sleep.

Mike stirs briefly, just long enough to sigh quietly and adjust his grip, two fingers almost instinctively pressed against the pulse on Harvey’s wrist.

After watching Mike with total reverence for a long time, Harvey closes his eyes and just breathes. On his own.

 

*

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harvey is quoting Debra Winger's character in _Legal Eagles_ when she says, "That look in your eyes [at the end]...pure, blue, steel." to Robert Redford's character. 
> 
> (I was so tired when I wrote this, so hopefully it didn't turn out too sensationalized at the end, but seriously, killing Harvey is something I just can't do, of course.)


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long! There's one chapter left, possibly two. :)

*

 

Nine days pass and they don’t talk about – or even mention – the elephant in the room, which is why Harvey is still even alive eight months after the fiery collision and the flatline that Mike can still hear in his head, clear as a bell; constant haunting backup music to any and every thought he has. But he doesn’t tell anyone that. Not even Harvey.

Harvey keeps his own secrets, like how uncomfortable he is in his own skin; his ravaged, melted, scarred skin. His legs feel weaker than he ever thought possible, and when he moves – with assistance – to and from the bed, he closes his eyes in exasperation and bites his tongue. But Mike knows him better than that, knows Harvey Specter hates hospitals to start with, hates help even more, and is probably spending a good deal of time screaming internally. It’s a cliché, really, because Harvey’s a control freak who’s been stripped, quite literally, of decision making, range of motion, and, really, most of his physical freedom. Mike’s too afraid to broach the topic; last time they went down the road of personal fear, they almost broke up. But he can tell it’s ripping Harvey to shreds inside, so he sits back nervously and waits for him to snap.

There’s a moment, closing in on two weeks, when Mike thinks Harvey’s on the cusp to doing just that. Even Harvey Specter’s professionalism and tact only stretches so far. After that, keeping it together is something he only succeeds at because of Mike. Because Mike’s the only person he’s ever had any patience for at all. But it’s the tail end of a rehab day that sits bitter on Harvey’s tongue, because the painkillers aren’t working, and there’s some kid younger than Mike trying to obnoxiously rally him across a threshold on the floor. And Harvey’s using every last shred of his energy just to operate his legs at all; just to convince them to move ten or so feet, and it occurs to him that for the first time in forty-three years – he has to learn how to fucking walk.

Despite the emotions inside him raging for an angry release, he bites his tongue; holds the words in with everything he has. And they press against the seams in his brain, pounding in time with the headache he’s had ever since he woke up – and how does a migraine even _last_ that long? He takes slow, measured breaths like the pretty woman from psych taught him to do, and he grips the parallel bars in tight fists, and pushes on like he’s closing a client. But it’s not the same thing, not by a mile, not by these ten feet. Because in theory, pain is a great motivator. In reality, however, it inhibits. And when it reaches _unbearable,_ whether or not you’re the City’s best closer doesn’t really matter: it just fucking _hurts._

Harvey knows – about seven inches away from the mark that his physical therapy assistant is looking at – that he isn’t going to make it. It’s a measly indicator of success, anyway; merely a foot, tops, further from where he’d gotten last week. According to the doctor, he’s doing ‘remarkably well’, an opinion that doesn’t encourage Harvey at all – it terrifies him. It terrifies him because he feels like shit, but everyone thinks he’s doing well, and he can’t help but wonder how close he is to hitting the recovery ceiling. It’s only been two weeks, which, now that he’s accepted that he’s lost eight months, he concedes isn’t that long. But it’s felt like forever. Every day is a new battle in the same war, and, staring at a line of tape on the floor, Harvey decides that even if he felt like fighting this one, it wouldn’t matter. His legs feel like lead, pushed harder in the last two weeks than they were for the better part of a year, and they’re strained under his weight and the weakness of atrophy. Biting his lip, he knows if he doesn’t throw in the towel now, call it a day, settle – he _hates_ that word – for stretches or something more attainable, then all of his frustration is going to come out, and that it’ll be ugly when it does.

Wound tight, he chances a look at Mike, who’s sitting across the room leaning over his knees, knuckle resting against his teeth. He smiles back and to anyone else he probably looks fine; calm and supportive. But Harvey sees the kid sitting there and knows he’s anything but; knows what Mike really is, is pure anxiety; a bag of nerves wearing an old Harvard t-shirt, one foot tapping unconsciously on the ground, teeth scraping the skin on his hand, waiting for the rubberband to snap. Waiting for Harvey to lose it.

But, with his teeth clamped together and a death grip on the bars beside him, Harvey drags his feet over the mark. He swears he can hear Mike sigh in relief.

*

 

“I know you want to say it, so just say it.”

Mike is the first to crack, surprisingly. But it's almost as hard to watch someone on the precipice of a breakdown as it is to be that person. In fact, it’s nerve wracking.  Perhaps even the relief of Harvey waking up is so crushing that it carries with it a burden and toll of its own. So Mike walks on eggshells for two more weeks, terrified of the inevitable, until he can’t handle the pressure anymore.

“Say what, Mike?” Harvey’s response isn’t hostile, though it isn’t particularly civil either. This just confirms Mike’s fears, that Harvey is pissed but too bound by commitment to admit it.

“I know that you remember more than you told me,” Mike says. “Before you got discharged I heard you tell a nurse that—”

Harvey shifts in bed and sighs. “And what good would that have done, Mike? What good would have ever come from you knowing that sometimes I still wake up feeling like someone pinned my legs under two hundred pounds of steel and set them on fire? Or that I can still feel the impact in my head whenever someone shuts a door?”

 “Or that you told me not to put you on any machines?”

 “Yeah, or that.” Harvey snaps.

Mike winces and looks away, a painful ache settling into his throat. It's the third worst outcome he’s been dreading. The first was that Harvey wouldn’t have woken up, the second that he would but wouldn’t remember him, and the third was that he would wake up…but he would hate Mike for what he did.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Mike mumbles eventually. He’s sitting a few feet away from Harvey on their bed, though he can feel every word driving more and more space between them. It hurts almost physically. “I only had a few seconds to decide and I—”

“You sat with me for an _hour_ after that, Mike,” Harvey reminds him coldly. “But you waited until I was unconscious to change your mind? To play God? And now what?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what now, Mike? What do I do _now?_ Or didn’t you plan this far ahead?”

Mike shakes his head, an onslaught of emotion turning his words into a sob. “You…you’re getting _better!”_

“Better?! Mike, I can barely _walk!”_ Harvey rips the sheet off his legs, exposing the thick, permanent scars winding their way up to his thighs. “How much _better_ am I going to get?”

“They said you’ll be able to _walk,_ Harvey,” Mike tells him, trying to steady his own voice. He stares down at the bed, gripping his own fingers tightly to ease the tension. He can’t stand when Harvey is angry at him. In fact, he can’t even remember the last time he was. Years, possibly. And probably only over something work-related, or out of concern, and only briefly. Never like this.

“Great. And after that?”

“What?”

“I mean,” Harvey shrugs. “What happens in six months when I’ve woken you up too many nights in a row because I’m in pain or because I’m having nightmares? Or in ten years when I’m fifty-something and you’re still in your thirties and another senior partner walks in the door?”

Mike’s head snaps up. “Harvey, what are you _talking_ about?”

“If you’re going to walk out, Mike,” Harvey replies, despondent. He looks away, “I’d rather you just do it now.”

“Harvey, I’m not—”

“Because I can’t…I can’t build a castle on sand, Mike,” he shakes his head, trying to mask the tremble in his voice and failing.

“I’m not walking _out,_ Harvey!”

“You did before.”

Mike’s throat feels like it’s closing up. “No, I didn’t,” he whispers.

“Almost.”

“But I _didn’t.”_

“Mike, I can’t marry you and then—” Harvey chokes on his words before finally bringing a hand to his mouth, shaking his head wildly and trailing off. As always, he manages to swallow down the emotion before it’s too intense to ward off.

Mike’s well aware now, after five years, that Harvey’s confidence, however impermeable, comes to a screeching halt at relationships. It’s residual trauma, probably, from what his mother did to his father and even though Mike knows that won’t ever happen to them, he can understand the fear. It’s the same way he’d felt, terrified of losing Harvey because he’d lost everyone else in his life. And Mike figures that the fact that it actually happened – that he _did_ lose Harvey for a period of time – doesn’t do much to ease Harvey’s own concern.

But in lieu of being able to see the future, all Mike can do is reassure him and hope like hell that Harvey believes it.

“I’m not gonna change my mind, I’m _not_.”

“I picked you, Mike. I’m sure. Are you?”

Mike levels their eyes. “Harvey, you’re the _only_ thing I’m sure of.”

*

 

Harvey’s progress is slow and tedious; three more weeks of nauseating narcotics and agonizing physical therapy before he starts to feel like he’s somewhat closer to normal, although he knows he’ll never quite make it back to the way he was. There’s permanent nerve damage in part of his right leg and more burn scars than all the plastic surgery in New York could fix. But all the doctors say he’s lucky to be alive, a technical medical miracle that Harvey doesn’t actually believe in even if he was, supposedly, living proof. And really, underneath the sensationalism, however well-intentioned, was a thick chart full of notes and scans that suggested his recovery was nothing more than eight months during which his brain simply healed. It was luck, but whether or not it was the good kind, sometimes he still isn’t sure. But he decides he doesn’t have a choice but to deal the hand he was dealt, so he carries on, pushing through the routine of pain and inconvenience until it’s almost habit; until he almost feels healthy again.

Sometimes, at night, when a migraine sneaks up on him and his head is pounding and he can’t sleep and his legs are under the blanket – because he has to cloak the grisly reminder to stave off the flashbacks one way or another – all the words he’s kept bottled up for the past six weeks flood to the surface. And Mike just rests his head on his shoulder and listens while they pour off Harvey’s tongue like liquid; like blood from all the time he’s spent biting it.

After that, with Mike’s hand resting over his heart, Harvey can sleep.

*

 

Over dinner, Mike tells him _everything:_ about Louis taking over the Valito case and losing, about going back to work, about Caldwell, and Blake, and quitting, and Jessica taking him to court, and going back to school. He does it slowly, covers a couple months worth of occurrences at a time, leaves out the part where he spent two weeks at home in a grief induced stupor and the parts where he beat the shit out of Quinn Heard and drank into oblivion, or at least until he was puking into Caldwell’s toilet on a regular basis. Because what would be the point? Besides, Mike knows Harvey’s already heard those things from Donna. He pretends not to, and for Mike’s sake, Harvey does the same.

“They know,” Mike says carefully one night, gauging Harvey’s reaction. With the tension subsided and their relationship back on track, for the most part, Mike figures it’s as good a time as any to tell him.

Harvey doesn’t need him to elaborate. He just asks, “How?”

Mike shrugs. “I told them. Well, I told Bryant. Your ex guessed.”

“Hm. He was good at reading people.”

Harvey doesn't seem concerned, and he isn't. Prescott won't tell a soul if he's still half the person Harvey knew at Harvard. And as far as Caldwell goes, based on Donna’s reports, he was such a staunch advocate for Mike for most of the year, that he probably wouldn’t breathe the wrong way around him let alone spill his secrets. It makes Harvey a little uncomfortable, but for the most part, he's grateful, so he doesn't press the topic. Plus, with MIke back in college, no one has a reason to dig up ancient history.

“You’re in school,” Harvey tells him, and when Mike looks uncertain, like maybe he’s made a mistake, he adds, “It doesn’t matter now, alright?”

“Yeah,” Mike mutters and gives him a weak smile. “I guess so.” But when Harvey stands up to clear their plates, Mike looks away. He doesn’t tell him that he has no intention of going back into law.

*

 

It’s late December when Harvey sets foot inside the firm for the first time in over ten months. At first, part of him feels like he’s only been gone for a weekend; like he fell asleep on Friday and woke up Monday morning, and in coming back he’s just picking up where he left off. But when he steps off the elevator, it hits him that the time he lost here has altered his perspective. The place looks the same, but it feels distinctly unfamiliar.

He stops, eye catching the letters on the wall – PEARSON SPECTER CALDWELL – but he just swallows hard and quickly walks away.

“You just missed Louis,” Donna tells him after he’s reached her desk. “He was hovering.”

Harvey smirks. “Thank God for good timing.”

He listens, leaning against her desk to ease the strain on his legs, as she chats about the latest partner drama and Darby’s less than cordial exit earlier that year.

Eventually, she answers the phone and he looks past her into his office. Except, it’s not his office anymore.

“It’s weird isn’t it?”

Donna’s voice breaks his stare, and he looks down.

“What is?”

She motions to the name on the door. Harvey hesitates and then shrugs. It doesn’t bother him as much as he thought it would. In fact, he feels almost relieved at his new found apathy for this place, because if he doesn’t care, then it doesn’t hurt him to know that firm has moved on. And deep down, he has too.

After a few more minutes, he sighs, walks over and opens the door and then stops short. He remembers that he can’t stroll inside anymore. So he stands on the threshold of the entrance and waits for an invitation.

Caldwell looks up from his desk and waves him in.

There’s less awkwardness than the first time they met, or the handful of times after that, all of which were when Caldwell showed up at Harvey’s door to check on Mike. After a while, between being swamped with cases for which he didn’t have Mike to help with anymore and knowing that Mike wasn’t alone now, his visits died down. He didn’t want to intrude, and in seeing that Mike seemed okay and Harvey seemed less than enthused by his presence, Caldwell had backed off.

“Jessica said you’d be dropping by,” he says, breaking a silence that’s only residually uncomfortable, because while neither of them knows each other very well, they have Mike in common which links them together whether they like it or not.

Harvey nods, hands in his pockets. “I am. But I wanted to thank you first.” The words come out forced, difficult to say, but surprisingly genuine.

“Oh?” Caldwell frowns because it’s the last thing he expected, if the standoffish way Harvey had acted during their prior encounters was anything to go by.

But Caldwell still has no idea what Harvey could possibly be thanking him for. Taking his office? His position? His associate? Or showing up unannounced to talk to his fiancé? A punch in the face would've been more expected. 

Harvey sighs like expressing gratitude is a big internal struggle, even when he really does mean it. “I know that you took care of Mike while I was in the hospital…”

When Caldwell still looks confused, Harvey nods through the glass toward Donna and Caldwell understands. He fidgets with a pen on the desk and shrugs. “He helped me a lot, with work, even after he left the firm. And he didn’t have anyone else, you know, so I just...wanted to help.”

Harvey flinches. He left Mike alone for eight months. Didn’t tried too, of course, and the rational part of him knows it isn’t his fault. But that doesn’t make him feel less responsible, and it doesn’t change the fact that someone else had to be there for Mike, that just a year ago Harvey promised nothing would happen to him, that Mike wouldn’t lose him, but he had anyway. And while Harvey is back now, and more or less recovered, he’s still haunted by the fact that so much of their time together was stolen - and there's nothing he can do to get it back.

“Is he doing okay?”

Harvey looks up, momentarily distracted by his guilt. “What?”

“Mike,” Caldwell says. “How’s he doing?”

“Fine.” Harvey’s tone is suddenly just the slightest bit cold, subtle enough that most people wouldn’t even pick up on it, but Caldwell does. “But you probably already knew that.”

Caldwell cocks his head in question.

“You’ve been texting him.”

“Is it a problem?”

“I don’t know. Is it?”

It’s not jealousy on Harvey’s part – he doesn’t suspect Caldwell ever intended to take Mike away from him, and he knows Mike wouldn’t leave either way. What it is instead, is insecurity flooding to the surface as it does every now and again. It’ll go away, with time and reassurance, but momentarily - it gets the better of him.

“Listen,” Caldwell smiles and shakes his head. “Mike’s off limits, I get it. But I…care about him. I didn’t want to just cut ties overnight.”

Harvey narrows his eyes at what sounds like a poorly disguised confession. For now, though, he pretends not to hear it. “You don’t have to cut ties,” he finally concedes, sighing. “Mike wouldn’t anyway.”

“If you tell him to he will.”

“If I told him to jump off a bridge he would. Doesn’t mean I’d do it.”

“So we’re good then?” Caldwell asks hopefully.

Harvey hesitates, breathing out slowly, and eventually nods. “Yeah.”

There’s a brief silence between them, maybe even unspoken understanding, and then Harvey decides to change the subject, to get away from talking about Mike because doing so is too sensitive, too emotional, and Harvey can absolutely not be caught showing any of that in front of his successor. At least, no more than he already did by thanking the man.

“I heard you blackmailed Jessica,” he announces, voice bordering on amused and impressed. “And won.”

Caldwell shrugs and smirks. “Figured the ends justified the means.”

“Big risk.”

“It was worth it.”

“Uh-huh,” Harvey says, and regards him for few more seconds before adding, “Speaking of Jessica. I need to go talk to her, so…”

“Yeah, yeah, of course.” Caldwell pauses and then stands up, walks around the desk, and outstretches his hand.

Harvey looks him in the eye and shakes it firmly.

*

 

“Your name is still on the wall, Harvey,” Jessica’s saying, her elbows resting on her desk. “You know you have a place here. Just say the word.”

“And kick Caldwell out?”

“I wouldn’t kick him out. There’s plenty of room and I need you both.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, Jessica,” Harvey tells her. “But the man practically kept Mike out of the bell jar for eight months. I’m not waltzing back in from the dead like Spock to knock him to the 46th floor.”

“You really don’t want to come back?”

“It’s not a matter of want, Jessica.”

“What is it, then?”

“I don’t know. A lot of bad things have happened here. Not at the firm, just the city in general. It doesn’t feel like home anymore,” Harvey explains. He looks away for a second and then shrugs, “The only thing that feels like home these days…is Mike.”

Jessica glances down for a minute. They haven’t discussed what happened between her and Mike while Harvey was comatose. It was a little intentional, because they both knew it’d drive a wedge between them, and because neither could bear to talk about it anyway. But Jessica could still feel slight bitterness from across the desk, colliding with loyalty and leaving Harvey in an unfortunate limbo between maintaining their relationship and being residually angry at the way she treated Mike.

Sitting there, he decides it’s time to address the elephant in the room – but he wants to do it swiftly. He wants to get it out in the open and then be done with it. He wants Jessica to know that he forgives her - wholly and completely - but also remind her of where Mike stands. 

“I want us to be okay, Jessica,” he says. “And I’ve let it go. So has he.”

“But?”

“But Mike was right.”

“About what?”

“You never gave him the benefit of the doubt.”

“I let him stay here for five years, Harvey. The kid walked out the door all on his own.”

“You drove him out. You never thought he was good enough for me. And you know what? You were right.”

Jessica raises her eyebrow.

“He’s _too_ good for me,” Harvey declares. “He had _eight months_ and every reason to throw in the towel this year, but he didn't. He put his life on hold for mine."

“I think you’ve done just as much for him.”

“No. But I’ll keep trying.”

They fall quiet for a few minutes, back into a familiar, comfortable sort of silence that Harvey had hoped they’d have again. He looks around Jessica’s office, knows it like the back of his hand, just as sure as he knows the second before she sighs contentedly and speaks again.

“What you going to do, Harvey?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You’re always sure.”

“Things change. I’m thinking…maybe we’ll move.”

“Leave New York?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“And go where?”

“I don’t know, Jessica,” Harvey says softly, staring beyond her and out the window where it’s bright even in the face of winter. He smiles, almost at peace. “Wherever Mike wants.”

 

*


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally wrapping this story up. there's one more chapter left, which is also a bit of an epilogue. 
> 
> :))

*

 

Harvey comes home from his visit to the firm to find a mass of abandoned papers spread out on the coffee table; evidence of a hasty but thorough search for something – he isn’t sure what – followed by surrender. Upon further inspection, it looks like the remnants of a complicated probate case, but he doesn’t spend more than a few seconds investigating before he sheds his coat and tie and heads into the bedroom.

The slender figure under the blankets almost looks sound asleep, but judging by a twitch of Mike’s feet, Harvey knows he isn’t, not anymore.

“Hey,” Mike says quietly, just barely looking over his shoulder.

“Hey yourself.”

“How’d it go?”

“Fine,” Harvey replies, toeing off his shoes and crawling in bed beside him. “But there’s a pro bono explosion in our living room.” He smiles and adds, “You still working Caldwell’s cases?”

Mike laughs a little. “Not really.”

“Not really?”

“It’s not his case. It’s… _his_ case.”

Harvey frowns, resting a hand on Mike’s shoulder. “Okay, kid, you got me. I’m lost.”

“It’s just…a thing with his parents’ property and he asked for my help with it,” Mike stops, squeezes his eyes shut at a ruthless memory. “But the day he asked me I…it was…”

Sighing, Harvey slides his hand off Mike’s shoulder and slips it around his chest instead. “It’s okay, Mike. I was just wondering.”

“I just…he did a lot for me and I wanted to do something for him, you know?” Mike shrugs. “And any other case I could do it, I could figure it out, but this one…this one I’m stuck on, Harvey.”

“Hm. It’s tough when your genius takes a day off and you have to operate at a relatively human IQ, isn’t it?”

Mike shoves him with an elbow. “Ha ha.”

“Maybe I could take a look at it.”

“If I can’t find anything, how are you gonna?”

“Are you saying you’re smarter than me?”

“Uh, yeah, I thought we established that like, I don’t know, four years ago.”

“All right, hotshot,” Harvey pulls his arm away casually. “If you don’t want my help…”

“No, no, no, I do,” Mike replies quickly, twisting a little to look Harvey in the eye. “Please.”

“Okay. I suppose.”

“You’re the best.”

“I’ll be the best tomorrow,” Harvey promises. “I talked to Jessica for thirty-seven minutes about a merger Louis screwed up and I don’t know if I’m ready to deal with the law again just yet. Maybe I should take sabbaticals more often.”

Mike tenses. “That’s not funny.”

“I’m kidding, Mike.”

“I know, but…”

“Shhh.” Harvey threads his fingers through Mike’s hair. “I’m sorry.”

At that, Mike relaxes, breathing out very slowly and settling into the bed a little more. He reaches behind him for Harvey’s hand, pulling it back around his chest. For a while, they just lay there, silent, and all Mike can feel – and all he _needs_ to feel – is the steady thrum of Harvey’s pulse under his hand.

Harvey knows; can always tell what Mike is doing when he puts two fingers just under his wrist, but he never stops him. It might be obsessive and it might be a little paranoid, but Harvey can’t blame him, can’t tell him to stop doing the one thing that seems to keep Mike at ease these days.

“Let’s leave,” Harvey whispers, mouth pressed close to Mike’s ear.

“Leave?” Mike’s voice is tired again. He shifts, yawns, leans back into Harvey’s embrace.

“Yes. Let’s start over, Mike. New city, new firm, new school, new people.”

The idea makes Mike exhale, almost in premature relief. “Seriously?” he asks, a little incredulous. “You’d leave New York?”

“I’d do anything for you.”

Mike rubs leftover sleep from his eyes and rolls over completely to face Harvey. “I don’t want you to do it for me.”

“I want to go,” Harvey assures him. “I want a clean slate, too. I want to marry you some place where nothing bad has ever happened.”

The idea makes Mike’s eyes fall shut, struggling to even grasp the idea that such a place exists, that there’s a place that he doesn’t have such grim history with; a place where his parents didn’t die and his grandmother didn’t die and Harvey didn’t almost die and he didn’t get kicked out school or sidelined into drug dealing and end up walking out on a job he wasn’t even supposed to have in the first place. It’s hard to process; almost impossible, actually, because Mike has never done anything but endure the aftermath of his problems, his tragedies; languishing helplessly in the fallout of every disaster. Even when he was trying to run from them, it was with the firm knowledge that ultimately he wouldn’t be able to stay ahead very long. New York was big, but all of the shit that happened to him was so much bigger.

It’s the opposite for Harvey, he thinks. Aside from the most recent disaster, as far as Mike knows, Harvey’s track record with New York is surprisingly positive. The majority of his experiences have been wins. Even the losses were fairly minor. It’s been year after year of success after success and even now, Harvey still has the city by its horns. Mike may not have thought it was an option before, but the idea of leaving – of _getting out_ – suddenly sounds possible, and he wants to do it. Still, he won’t make Harvey leave a place that has given him everything he has.

So Mike opens his eyes, looks up and says, a little uncertain, “But your whole life is here, Harvey.”

Almost smugly, though, Harvey leans in and grins, as if Mike’s words were expected and just a little too presumptive. “Actually,” he says, and he slides his hand through Mike’s hair again. “My whole life is right here.”

Mike smiles and rolls his eyes. “Poetic.” He snuggles into the pillows and for a few minutes, they’re silent, just the steady whirr of the ceiling fan and each other’s breathing. Eventually, Mike lifts his head and asks, “Are you really serious?”

Harvey nods. “Absolutely.”

“Where…where would we go?”

“Wherever you want. Just sleep on it. Alright?”

“Alright,” Mike replies. He has more on his mind, but it takes several minutes before he works up the courage to bring it up. “Hey, Harvey?”

“Yeah, kid.”

“Would you be mad at me if I…like, if I changed my major?”

“What? What do you mean?”

“I mean…if I didn’t go to law school.”

“Mike, that was the plan. I thought…isn’t that what you want?”

“Yeah.” Mike nods. “I mean…it was. And I do love it, Harvey, I do, I swear. I think part of me will always be a lawyer, no matter what. But…after I left the firm, something changed. I don’t know how to explain it. It was like I was supposed to end up leave. Not just because of the fraud thing, but because…I was supposed to do something else, too.”

Harvey frowns. “What…what else is there, Mike? I mean, you said it yourself—you’ll always be a lawyer. Just get the damn paper to prove it.”

“Med school.”

“What?”

“Harvey—” Mike closes his eyes because he feels like they’re on the verge of their second fight since Harvey got out of the hospital.

“Mike…” Harvey sighs and shakes his head. “What happened to me? That’s not a good reason to jump tracks, change your whole life.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not logical.”

“Well, you’re the logical one. According to everyone else, I’m just really emotional and unpredictable.”

“All excellent qualities of someone holding a scalpel.”

“I don’t want to be a surgeon,” Mike persisted. “I want to do research, I want to…I want to make sure what happened to us doesn’t happen to anyone else. And if it does, I want there to be a way to fix it. I loved being a lawyer, Harvey. But being a lawyer didn’t help me when I was standing in a hospital room watching you die.”

“Were you going to tell me about this?”

“Yeah. I just…I put it off because…I was scared. I _am_ scared. That you’ll be disappointed in me.”

“Mike, there’s no chance of that. You just surprised me.”

“So you’re not mad then?”                                                           

“Mad? No. Proud, definitely.” Harvey pulled him closer. “You’re gonna have to take another semester, get your pre-reqs done.”

“I know. I don’t mind.”

“I’ve heard doctors and lawyers don’t get along.”

Mike laughed and rolled his eyes. “Lawyers don’t get along with anyone.”

 

*

 

Harvey goes to work again on Friday. He talks to Louis for an hour, reliving their glory days – which they both try to claim is now – and their finest moments, and the worst nights in the bullpen trying to scramble to the top of the ladder, chasing the elusive senior partner title with the resilient hope of fresh-faced associates.

There’s that same title, newly pressed onto Louis’s door, and Harvey is happy for him. When he walks out of that office for the last time, it’s following a tight hug and the sense of confirming a ten year long tumultuous bond that was always, at its core, a friendship.

Harvey already feels closure.

Jessica, though, is a different story. She stands at her window, stoic, but when Harvey moves to embrace her he can see the wetness in her eyes.

“Jessica.”

She just shakes her head once.

“We’re packing,” he tells her, and it sounds like an apology. “But we don’t actually know where we’re going yet. I’ll be here a while longer. If you need me—”

_“‘If_ I need you.’ You idiot.”

Harvey smiles and Jessica smiles wider.

“You could come over,” he suggests. “Have dinner. Order the movers around. Make peace with Mike.”

“Mike knows where he stands with me.”

“And where’s that?”

Jessica looks at him, all reverence and... _pride,_ and says, “With you.”

 

*

 

Caldwell’s office – _his_ old office – is Harvey’s last stop on his way of the firm. It’s small talk at first, and civil niceties, but it’s far more comfortable than any of their earlier encounters.

“Mike decide where he wants to go?” Caldwell asks, during a lull in the conversation after it turned toward work and clients.

Harvey shakes his head. “Mike’s hung up on somewhere warmer. I’d like to go to Boston – old stomping ground, I guess – but it’s up to him.”

Caldwell nods. He sits down at his desk, and then his eyebrows knit in thought. “I, uh, keep in touch with my boss. Just to see how everything’s working out. She’s happy for me, but I can tell she wants me to come back.”

“If you’re trying to give this back,” Harvey begins, motioning around the office. “Don’t. The second that car hit me, this place…it wasn’t mine anymore. Something changed. You’re here because you’re supposed to be.”

“No, I wasn’t—what I was saying is...my old position? It’s still open,” Caldwell explains, looking up. “Top three corporate firm in the southeast. They’d probably reserve an entire floor for you.”

Harvey’s caught off guard for several seconds when what Caldwell’s telling him sinks in. He looks away in consideration, eventually asking, “So I can run this by Mike?”

“Yeah.” Caldwell smiles before Harvey turns to leave. “Tell him it’s pretty warm there, too.”

Stopping just short of the door, Harvey remembers something and turns around. “That probate case you were stuck on—” he starts, and Caldwell looks back up quickly. “You still have time to fight it?”

“Uh, yeah, actually. Stalled it until January, bought myself some time. Why?”

“Mike asked me to take a look at it. Now, I’m a little rusty, but—”

“Wait, you’re saying you found something? You can help me?”

“I’m saying Mike can.”

“Yeah, but…” Caldwell frowns. “He read the whole thing. If he couldn’t figure it out—”

“Apparently he just needed me to come up with absolutely nothing before the lightbulb went off,” Harvey told him. “Unless your sister wants her share of the property, she’s getting nothing. Look, I’ll send everything back with Donna, okay?”

Caldwell’s shoulders sag with relief. “Harvey.”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you. And…tell Mike I said the same thing.”

“Maybe you should tell him,” Harvey suggests. “He’d want to hear it from you.”

There’s something in Harvey’s tone that tells Caldwell they’re not talking about the case anymore, but it’s unexpected. His mouth goes dry and he plays stupid.

“Tell him what?”

Harvey just raises an eyebrow. “Look, I don’t have eidetic memory and I did suffer serious head trauma, but I’m pretty sure I’m not a complete idiot.”

Caldwell sighs, and admits, “No.”

“Why not?”

“Would you have wanted me to?”

“It’s different now.”

“How?”

“Because we’re leaving. And either way, he’s gonna be fine. But it wouldn’t hurt him to know that there’s at least one other living person in the world besides me who gives a shit about him.” Harvey pauses and then, voice gentle, adds, “So if you still do, or you ever did, then…you should tell him.”

 

*

 

Harvey picks up lunch on his way home, and waits until they’re at the table, sitting side by side, before he tells Mike.

He starts out filling him in on how things went at the firm -- how leaving felt like a relief, and not loss. It was time to move on.

Mike looks up from his food, interest piqued. “Wait, he’s saying you could get his old position?”

“Well,” Harvey shrugs. “It’s not set in stone. But he seems pretty confident they’d want me.”

“Of course they want you!” Mike exclaims.“So…is this it? This job, you’d want it, right? I mean, it’s exactly what you were doing here, so…”

“Which is why I didn’t shut Caldwell down when he brought it up. New York I’m over. The law, not so much. Anyway, there’s good schools there, you could transfer. And not much snow. But like I told you – this is your call, Mike. If you like the sound of it then—”

“I do, I do,” Mike replies quickly, certainly. He breathes, steady and controlled while his eyes flash with excitement. “So…I guess we’re moving to Atlanta?”

Harvey just smiles, reaches out and affectionately touches Mike’s face. “I guess so, rookie.”

 

*

 

They wait eleven more days, only because Harvey still has a couple follow-up appointments with the neurologist. He leaves with a clean bill of health, aside from a refill on a prescription for crippling migraines, and an aspirin regimen for ‘extremely unlikely blood clots.’ At least most nights he doesn’t wake up in pain anymore.

He gives their realtor instructions, which come down to: just sell it.

It’s a little bittersweet, but looking at houses -- actual _houses --_ is all Mike needs to let go, completely. It means they’re starting over in home that will never be anything except their’s, together. It won’t belong to the past or to a city that doesn’t inspire Mike anymore, only overwhelms him. And for Harvey, it won’t be somewhere that was only ever his; a place he’d spent most of his post-grad life alone in.

By Wednesday, it’s a toss-up between two brownstones and they’re discussing the pros and cons of each one. The first is a stone’s throw from downtown; and Harvey leans toward that one because he might be ready to leave New York but the idea of living in the suburbs still freaks him out a little.

Mike concedes, but he keeps looking at the second one. Slightly more toward the outskirts, but it’s “not like Arcadia or anything,” he says. And it’s not far enough away that they would need to drive -- an issue he knows he’ll have to get over one day, but they both know it won’t be any time soon. They’ve already made firm plans to send all of their belongings, and fly instead.

Harvey leans over him to look at the screen a little closer.

“Three bedrooms?” he asks, and Mike doesn’t say anything because he already knows that nothing he does is subtle anymore.

Harvey sighs contently. “What one do you want, rookie?”

“I want whatever one you want,” Mike replies, shrugging.

“That’s not what I asked.”

Mike turns and looks up. “I really want the second one,” he admits.

Harvey just nods, smiles, and writes down the number.

 

*

 

Donna and Mike have eight boxes packed by the time Harvey wakes up on Saturday.

 

He isn’t up at six a.m. on weekends anymore -- or any day for that matter -- because it takes a solid eight hours of sleep for his medicine to kick in and keep his headaches at bay. He tires a lot easier now; four miles in the park is really all he can manage, less than half of what he did before with ease. But considering he should probably be dead, my most medical opinions, he figures that's an achievement in itself. 

Mike tries to make him feel better by saying, “Finally I can keep up with you.”

And it helps, it really does, and Harvey lets go of the past a little more each day, but not without lingering reminders of his limited capabilities. Nights are difficult too, now and then, less and less each week but still enough to make him sigh, a little defeated.

When it does happen, Mike unfailingly rests his head on Harvey’s chest to reassure him. “It takes time.” 

Harvey’s scoff is bitter. “That’s what they keep telling me.”

“It took you eight months to wake up, Harvey.”

“What does that have to do with this?”

Mike frowns at his stubbornness. “I don’t know, maybe you’re not a robot and I’m not marrying you solely for sex?”

Harvey sighs, and he still feels a little insecure, but he knows Mike is right. At least, Mike’s opinion is the only one that matters. He runs his fingers through slightly-damp blonde hair. “I never said sorry. For the fight we had.”

“That was...Harvey, that was months ago. And I’m pretty sure you did.”

“Well. I don’t--I still can’t really remember everything. But I wasn’t fair. No one else was going to wait for me. Were they?”

Mike stalls, just drawing little circles on Harvey’s stomach. Finally, he tells the truth, because he knows that Harvey already knows too. “No.”

“You fought for me.”

“You would’ve done it for me,” Mike says, and he swallows before his voice can crack. “Can we not talk about it? Please.”

They go to sleep instead.

 

Harvey leans against the counter that Saturday to steady himself, pours a glass of water and swallows his pills routinely. “If I didn’t know better,” he calls, “I’d say you two were planning to leave without me.”

“We were,” Mike announces. “But at the last minute I decided I might miss you.”

Harvey walks gingerly out of the kitchen, gradually working his way up to normal mobility for the day. He kisses Mike and mutters, “Smartass.”

Donna looks up from where she’s wrestling décor off the walls. “If you boys don’t mind delaying the foreplay for a few hours, I could use a little help.”

“I don’t know how much heavy lifting I’m allowed to do.”

“Half this shit is yours anyway,” Mike says, sliding an empty box toward him. “I had like, half a box of things to my name when I moved in.”

“I think I remember something like a panda and weed paraphernalia.”

Mike laughs, but not before grabbing a pillow from the couch and tossing it playfully at his fiancé’s face.

 

*

 

Two nights before they leave, Mike is buzzing with a strange kind of energy. He’s excited but he’s calm all at the the same time, like this is finally a change in his life that does the opposite of terrify him.

It seems to be the same for Harvey. He’s hums quietly, in tune with the quiet jazz music playing in the background, while they make dinner. Every now and then he reaches out to rest his hand on the back of Mike’s neck, and slowly slide it away when they move.

The timer on the oven has just gone off, and Harvey has poured two glasses of wine, when someone knocks.

Caldwell’s on the other side when Mike opens the door. 

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Mike replies. He didn’t intend to leave without saying goodbye, but he’s a little surprised to see Caldwell show up, particularly since he looks a little nervous and Mike only recalls him ever appearing very stoic, even in the throes of one of Mike’s breakdowns.

But tonight he’s shifting on his feet a bit, and intermittently fiddling with his watch. He looks over Mike’s shoulder, and Mike follows his gaze to see Harvey standing at the end of the hall. After a few seconds, Harvey just gives them both a nod and walks back into the kitchen.

“Do you want to come in?” Mike asks. “Harvey won’t bite, I promise.”

Caldwell shakes his head. “No, I’m not staying long. I just wanted to tell you something.”

Mike waits.

“You asked me once why I was helping you. You asked me why I cared about you and I said it was because I was being decent but…I wasn’t telling the truth, not really.”

“...I know.”

“You know?”

“Donna,” Mike says. “And you weren’t, like, super subtle.”

Caldwells smiles. “Right.” He takes a deep breath. “Anyway, I know you’re leaving soon and this company we’re representing, it’s taking Jessica and I to Boston for a few days, so I thought I’d say goodbye tonight. And I wanted to thank you for--”

“Thank me?”

“For finding the loophole in my probate case.”

“Oh.” Mike waved his hand. “That was all Harvey.”

“Either way,” Caldwell insists. He extends his hand.

At first, Mike doesn’t even see it. He’s looking ahead at the person who kept him above water for eight months, but it occurs to him that it was all very coincidental; the right person showing up at the right time in the middle of a disaster. And even if they were the longest eight months of Mike’s life, it feels dreamlike now.

He finally realizes the hand before him, and reaches out to grasp it. The concept is odd, Mike thinks -- given the times that he’d launched himself into the man’s arms during an intoxicated meltdown or after his debilitating loss to Jessica in court -- but somehow it makes sense.

Caldwell’s voice pulls Mike back to the present.

“You met your quota, Mike,” he says. “I promise you nothing bad is ever going to happen again. Life’s going to leave you alone from here on out.”

Mike isn’t sure if he believes that just yet, but it helps to hear that someone else does.

“Bryant--” he begins, like there’s a sentence he started the day they met that he never finished and can’t remember what it was. But he stops, draws a blank; realizes it doesn’t matter now.

His relationship with Caldwell was intense, but transient, like a bridge to get them both over two separate personal tragedies. And now -- with a firm handshake -- it’s over.

 

Mike waits a moment before closing the door, taking a deep breath, and walking back to Harvey, who’s waiting patiently for him with their food and wine.

“I just remembered there’s no where to sit.” Harvey motions into the living room at the wide expanse of vacant floors and bare walls. He smiles warmly. “Bed?”

Mike nods. “Okay.”

Harvey passes him his plate and his glass, places a gentle hand on the small of his back and follows. Halfway to their room, he asks softly, “Are you okay?”

Mike sets his food down while he crawls into the bed he’s slept in for three years now; the one he languished and cried alone in for eight months. There aren’t enough good memories in it -- or the world -- to outweigh those ones, and he can’t wait to get out.

But he’s content knowing that in two days, they are. They’re getting on a plane and leaving, and not looking back; rolling the dice in a place where life, hopefully, has a little more mercy.

He doesn’t know how, after everything, but he really is okay. And he settles against Harvey’s chest and tells him that.

“I’m okay.”

Harvey runs his fingers through Mike’s hair. “Good,” he murmurs. “I love you.”

Mike just smiles around a sip of wine. When he sets it down, his ring clinks against the glass, and that’s the only response Harvey needs to hear.

 

*


	14. epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been forever since I finished something I started! I hope the ending is satisfying. I'm really trying to get all of my WIPs done before I'm 100. ;)

 

*

 

Mike writes down his name --  _Michael Specter._

And the date --  _February 19, 2018._

Two years to the day.

He’s in a cold, at-capacity classroom, a thick book of questions under his hand that he has the next seven hours to finish. He doesn’t think it’ll take him more than four, but his mind is distracted. He tries to compartmentalize; to bury the past and memories of the accident somewhere in the back of his brain so he can focus, but it’s not easy.

The first six pages are more of a struggle than he’s ever had with a test.

_Just like that, a mob of scrubs and white coats descended on Harvey as though they themselves couldn’t stand doing nothing and had only been waiting for permission to intervene. Mike looked on in both relief and horror as they shocked and pumped his chest and push various cardiac drugs until they gained a rhythm, and then funneled a tube into his throat. It was medicine, but it looked brutal._

Mike blinks, breathes, and reminds himself why he’s here. In the end, it takes him five hours and thirty-seven minutes. He turns in the MCAT and goes home.

 

*

The air in Georgia is balmy, warm, a little heavy. It’s also clean. There’s even a mild breeze to it, Mike notices, if he turns to the side a bit.

He’s never had a dog before. Or a yard, for that matter.

Even when he was younger, his family lived in close quarters; apartments or townhouses a dozen blocks from a patch of grass, let alone anywhere near two landscaped acres. He grew up in New York and he loved the city, but he'd never planned to stay there as long as he had. It was only out of happenstance that he did, because he’d never been anywhere else, and never had the opportunity to leave, or, more importantly, anyone to leave _with._

Now he’s married, and they have a Beagle, and neighbors who not only speak to them but actually come over on holidays to mingle during a cookout. Which wasn’t always their style, although Harvey did like to entertain, and more so now that they actually have the time.

But their relationship with time is complicated.

Mike throws a tennis ball and watches Murdock chase after it, ears flopping, gait somewhat lopsided, probably because he’s a little overweight. But he was a stray when they got him, and a little skinny, and Mike kind of related and therefore felt bad. Harvey never gets off Mike’s case about ‘feeding the dog scraps.’

The thing is, Harvey doesn’t always remember what he’s already told Mike. The status quo sixteen months after waking up from an eight month long coma is a significant improvement in the severity of his headaches -- but a gradual deterioration of his short-term memory.

He forgets menial things like the car keys, locking the door, forgetting to buy milk. But then there’s the things he can’t always afford to forget -- like a client’s name, his PIN number, or the way home. It’s fleeting, for the most part, but recurring.

Mike didn't expect him to take it in stride, but Harvey’s been particularly adaptable. All the doctors and tests prepared him for the potential of long-term problems associated with such severe head trauma, and while Mike lived in hopeful denial of any of it actually happening, Harvey was always quietly waiting for the day.

So he doesn’t exist in fear of waking up forgetting important parts of his life. It might happen, but for now it is what it is; a frustration on bad days and inconvenience on the good ones. He’s always planned for the future, almost obsessively. Now he just lives for the moment.

 

*

Mike graduates in May, amidst about 4,000 other students at Emory. He can’t see Harvey in the crowd of people, but he knows that he's there, and he knows he’s proud.

In June, he gets his letter of acceptance to medical school. It was the first time in his life he actually considered the possibility that he hadn’t scored high enough on an exam, because the material didn’t come as easily to him as the law did, but mostly because he’d been so distracted that day.

 

On the fridge, next to the same picture of them Donna had taken at that party years ago -- the one that sat on his desk until everyone thought he was dead -- Harvey hangs the letter.

 

*

Mike gets paint _everywhere._ On his shirt, his shorts, in his hair, even on his face when he pauses to wipe his brow.

“I don’t even know how you manage to make this much of a mess,” Harvey remarks. “It’s like you just poured the paint out and rolled in it.”

“That’s the point, Harvey. Painting’s _supposed_ to be messy.”

Harvey, of course, is wearing the only long-sleeved shirt and jeans he deemed worthless enough to ruin, and yet he still doesn’t have a drop on them. He just laughs and returns to the portion of the wall he’s been working on.

The room was gray when they moved in. Perfectly fine, in Harvey’s book, and more than suitable for a guest room that wasn’t often occupied. Then Mike started hinting about how it was “Really empty,” to which Harvey told him, “Because there’s no guests in it, Mike.” But he knew exactly what Mike was implying.

So now they’re covering slate with a pale blue, and the walls are getting brighter and their arms are getting heavier.

In between coats, Harvey turns, looks down at the floor and frowns.

Mike watches, waiting for something to click, and when it doesn’t, he asks, “What, baby?”

“The paintbrush,” Harvey mutters, almost to himself. “I don’t know where I put it.”

Mike steps up behind him, winds his arms around Harvey’s waist, and smiles a little. He slides his hand down to Harvey’s and takes the paintbrush from his grip.

“Oh.” Harvey sighs and winces at a sharp pain near his temple. “Right.”

“Come on.” Mike tugs on his shirt. “Let’s take a break.”

 

*

Some traditions are too good to give up. Like morning jogs on Saturday (Harvey’s worked his way back up to five miles), and evening walks with their dog (who hasn’t worked up to running at all.)

And there’s movie night, on Friday, which is Mike’s favorite. It was one of the first things they did together, as an actual couple, and it still makes him feel safe and loved and _happy._ Which triggers him to think about all of the things that had to happen in order for them to get to this moment, right now, curled up in bed, lights off, Murdock by their feet.

His own words blare in his head.

_“I changed my mind! Do something! Please, I’m begging you, please do something. I’ll sign new papers, just fucking give them to me!”_

It wasn’t something he ever wanted to have to decide, and it steamrolled him with guilt for months after, wondering if he'd been selfish; if he’d royally fucked up. But now he knows that for all the things that were out of his control, that was one thing he had a say in -- and one thing, it turns out, that he’d done right.

“Hey.” He feels Harvey tapping his shoulder. “Mike.”

Mike blinks. “Sorry. What?”

Harvey points to the screen. “I like this part.” He won’t remember the plot by morning, but it doesn’t matter.

“Me too.” Mike nods. “Hey, why’d you pick blue?”

“What?”

“The paint, for the room? You picked blue.”

“I didn’t pick blue,” Harvey says. “You picked blue, I just...happened to agree with your taste for a change.”

Mike knows Harvey can’t remember it all; it’s been two weeks since they painted, their first DIY project together, which ultimately turned out to be a success. Mike credits that to Harvey for not letting him go near the ceiling.

“You want a boy.” He smirks. “I knew it.”

Harvey shrugs. “Blue is gender neutral.” He reaches for the remote and lowers the volume. “I don’t have a preference.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Me either.” Mike sighs happily and leans back, closer into Harvey’s arms. Then he asks, softly, with a fraction of self-doubt, “Can I handle this?”

He doesn’t need to explain what. He’s starting medical school in ten days. Harvey’s co-managing the entire corporate department at the firm. ...And they have a kid on the way.

He isn’t used to having so much _good_ happening at once -- or at all.

“I think there’s been a lot you thought you couldn’t handle, rookie,” Harvey replies, his hands slipping under Mike’s arms and settling around his chest. “And you did just fine.”

Mike tilts his head up. “True,” he mumbles, kissing Harvey lightly on the jaw. He tugs strong hands tighter around himself, lacing their fingers together.

The movie goes on and Mike realizes halfway through that he hasn’t paid any attention to it since they started or stopped talking. He can feel Harvey’s breath on the back of his neck slowing; heavy with sleep, so he switches off the TV.

 _“Harvey._ Come on. Lay down.”

Sleepily, Harvey shuffles down the bed until he can face-plant into his pillow. Mike laughs deliriously and Harvey follows suit. Eventually, he rolls onto his back and corrals Mike into his arms again.

“Good?” he asks.

Mike settles in beside him and nods. “Yeah.”

There’s a click as Harvey reaches and turns off the lamp, and then lets out long sigh. Like every other night, Mike’s head is resting on him, left arm thrown protectively over Harvey’s stomach to hold onto his wrist. It’s like Mike’s mastered the art of being as close as possible.

There’s nothing about the way Mike clings to him that’s a coincidence: Harvey can’t hear his own heartbeat, but he can feel it. It’s beating soundly and steadily in his chest, just beneath Mike’s strategically placed ear.

“I love you,” he whispers, and he finally thinks of the right word to describe how he feels right now: _home._

While New York was always busy trying to go up against the world, Atlanta goes coolly and confidently up against itself. And occasionally the region, or even the country, but not on back to back occasions. It’s the same sort of cutthroat corporate embodiment of law, but on a smaller scale, and at a slower place, the kind that leaves a little breathing room at the end of the day. Harvey wouldn’t have known what to do with the spare time a dozen years ago, when he was running around at a breakneck pace trying to prove his worth to Jessica, but now, pushing forty-five, with endless wins behind him that still taste just as sweet as the day he sealed them – he’s okay with it. Not just okay, he’s content. _Happy._ Which is the one state of being that always somehow eluded him, until now.

When he speaks again -- slow and breathy and on the verge of sleep -- he feels Mike’s fingers tighten around his pulse.

_“More than anything.”_

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to everyone who stuck with this story for so long and encouraged me to keep writing it <3 <3


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